Giant Penises Save the Planet

Have you ever heard of a Stirling engine? According to Wikipedia, they look like huge male genitalia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine

I mention this only because these huge penis engines can save the world by being placed in deserts and used to create cheap electricity from the heat of the sun.

http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2005/11/69528

As you can see from the story, big companies are building Stirling engine farms to capture the sun’s energy more effectively than photovoltaic panels. This could work, but it’s not the economic model that will set us completely free. Let me tell you what is: Giant penis engine co-op investments.

Let’s say the next president of the United States fast-tracks the following concept: Any company can buy a bunch of land in the desert, and start building Stirling engine farms that connect to the country’s electrical grid. The genius part of my idea is that individual investors can own one specific penis engine and the profits from it. The organizer of the venture just rents the space and provides maintenance, insurance, administration, and installation for the devices.

This economic model is much better than having it all done by big companies. People want to help the country become energy independent, and they are frustrated that big corporations don’t seem to be doing enough to make it happen. However, if you told me I could own my own clean energy generator, and make money too, almost guaranteed, I’d be all over it. I’d feel like I was helping the country and sticking it to the big oil companies and terrorists at the same time. You couldn’t build these penis engine farms fast enough to satisfy investor demand.

And here’s the best part. The organizing company for these energy farms would provide real-time data on the performance of your penis engine, direct to your computer, so it could show your profits as they happen. When it’s night in the desert, your profit counter slows to zero. When the sun comes up, it starts spinning with dollar signs.

How fucking cool would that be?

Investing is fun, but you rarely get to see the money being made in real time, without any serious risk of loss. Unlike stocks, your profits would never reverse direction. As long as the sun comes up, your counter starts spinning and your bank account fattens.

The organizing company could also provide video of the penis engine farm so you can watch your investment, and see that it is being maintained. If my counter stops spinning, I want to check the video and see that it’s because the maintenance crews are washing down the solar dish.

The power of this idea is in the psychological impact. I can invest in Southern California Edison, and get a piece of their action for the penis engine farms they are building, but it wouldn’t feel as real. I wouldn’t get the same charge as owning my own physical penis engine and watching the meter run.

The reason so many people recycle is, in my opinion, because it’s such a tangible act. Every time you carry your empty bottles and used newspapers to the curb, you feel like a good citizen. If you could accomplish the same benefit to the Earth through some sort of purely financial transaction, compliance would be much lower. People want immediate feedback that their good acts are helping the world.

Huge penis engines are the answer. The government would have to clear a bunch of red tape, in all likelihood, and probably need to fund some infrastructure to connect the desert penis farms to the national power grid, but it’s all doable.

I say it’s time to erect some penises. Who’s with me?

Comments

[water filters]

Great idea. These engines are used in submarines.

[Inyo]

Appropriately enough, you could combine them with the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant which consists of two domes shaped like perky boobs, complete with nipples.

[101 Ways to Save the Planet]

Funny - I love to read, laughm etc. Thanks.

But the bottom line is we all could be doing a little better in helping the earth along.

Some practical ways in this free eBook.

[M]

Dear evil genius, nothing says "explicit sex act" like an animation of a beta Stirling with a 'Rhombic drive':

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/tmsb/stirling/animation/anim_3.html

See you in hell, you dirty bastards!

[Berkana]

Sorry to bust your bubble, but the engine used in the SES solar collectors being erected in the desert by So. Cal. Edison are not the "penis engines", which are beta-Stirlings. The engines in So. Cal. are double-acting alpha-Stirlings.

[Berkana]

Sorry to bust your bubble, but the engine used in the SES solar collectors being erected in the desert by So. Cal. Edison are not the "penis engines", which are beta-Stirlings. The engines in So. Cal. are double-acting alpha-Stirlings.

[Listo Cómics]

You are good at Freudian marketing!

[Matthew Kovich]

Public School districts could hold fund raisers to buy a penis engine to be owned by the district, which would provide a constant stream of income (eventually offsetting the energy cost of operating the schools).

[David Haywood]

RE: Akshay's comments (and the wider issue of solar energy raised by Scott)

--- QUOTE BEGINS ---
"If you build a 1,000 MW coal plant, it runs all day and night, giving you an average of 975-990 MW with shutdowns.

If you build a 1,000 MW wind farm, you get about 300 MW, plus you will probably have to build another 1,000 MW power plant to supply energy when the wind doesn't blow (because someone still wants the power, even when on calm days). Don't mention all of the fat happy coyotes and not so happy dead birds.

If you build a 1,000 MW solar farm, obviously you will get less than 500 MW, plus again, you will have to have another plant to supply power during the night. Admittedly, this would help with peak usage during the day for nearby cities, but you might have to turn the tv off after dark."
--- QUOTE ENDS ---

This is a misleading (and, in places, factually incorrect) comment.

Yes, it's true that individual wind farms generate (as an annual average) about 30 per cent of their maximum rated capacity (i.e. a capacity factor of 0.3, as we say in energy engineering), but this doesn't necessarily mean that you have to back them up with coal thermal (or that they don’t generate electricity at all for 70 per cent of the time!).

Firstly, the capacity factor that Akshay cites for coal thermal (0.975-0.99) is much higher than any plant I've worked on (although I haven't worked on coal thermal in the US). A 2002 paper on this subject (S. Pacca and A. Horvath, Environ. Sci. Technol., 36, 3194-3200 (2002)) quotes an average capacity factor for coal of 0.78, which is more in line with my experience.

Secondly, (nearly) any electrical generation system has to have some power plants which vary their output for situations where electricity demand increases above base load levels (i.e. power plants that are deliberately designed to have a low capacity factor). Because of the available capacity from such plants, it is usually possible to integrate moderate amounts of wind energy into electrical networks with no additional backup required. In fact, quite substantial amounts of wind energy (20 per cent or so) can be integrated into most grids with only very small amounts of additional backup (see Dr Mark Diesendorf's paper which I cite later in this post).

Thirdly, another sensible approach (used in New Zealand, Norway, the UK, etc.) is to use wind farms in conjunction with existing hydro dams as an 'energy extender', i.e. in simplistic terms, when the wind is blowing you let the dams fill up. In other words, you use the wind turbines to increase the effective capacity of the dams. Even in the US there are a number of existing hydro dams (Hoover, etc.) to which this could apply.

Fourthly, Akshay's claims about large amounts of bird strike on wind turbines is simply untrue. This has been refuted in a number of academic journals, but Dr Mark Diesendorf at the University of New South Wales has written a good non-technical paper which deals with this myth (and many others about wind energy). Anyone interested in this subject should read it:

http://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/content/userDocs/RefutingWindpowerFallacies.pdf

Fifthly, to return to the subject of solar thermal (and to refute Akshay's final point), there are two ways to implement these systems which require no additional plant backup at all:

1. Solar thermal systems can be designed to use heat from combusted fuels when the sun is not shining. Some of the solar Stirling machines trialled in Spain did this by burning natural gas to provide a heat input to the engines at night.

2. An even cleverer design for solar thermal system uses a steam (Rankine) engine. In this case, it's possible to store the solar-generated steam for later use when the sun is not shining, or even to allow the system to follow demand. This was done in the PS10 plant in Spain (to provide only one hour of storage, however). The Ausra solar thermal pilot plant in Australia can store steam for up to 20 hours, and *already* produces electricity at lower cost than gas in that country.

A short non-technical article on the Ausra solar thermal plant can be found here:

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9719858-7.html

Incidentally, Ausra claim that a scaled-up version of their plant will operate with a capacity factor of 0.8 (about the same as coal), which will allow it to be used a baseload generator -- although, of course, we should be reserve judgement on such claims until a plant is actually built.

Energy engineering (whether is relates to transport or stationary uses -- be it fossil fuels, nuclear, or renewable) is a subject in which the facts/science are readily available in academic and technical journals. It's a shame that so much noise is generated by people who prefer to rely on myth, conspiracy websites, or have their 'facts' dictated by their own political beliefs (anyone remember Rush Limbaugh's rejection of front-loading washing machines as "politically correct" because they use less water & energy?).

As a (former) energy engineer I can get quite depressed by this...

[Hurda]

and you definetly should be allowed to buy upgrades that will be added as you're looking on your penis.

Imagnine it, bigger balls (heatsink) should be a hit #1

[jenjen]

Giant Penises will save us? Just in time - our local Giant Boobs are pretty much out of juice.
http://geography.asu.edu/pasqualetti/photos/san_onofre.jpg

[Dalebert]

Oh, I just had another idea. The cool thing about the satellites is you could power a turbine on a moving target just by redirecting the beam. So for instance, it could power a turbine on a cruise ship.

[Dalebert]

We should build satellites that capture light with mirrors and lenses and then fire a laser beam down to earth to power turbines, effectively utilizing light from a larger area. Also, I'm not a physicist, but I suspect the atmospheric interference would be far less since more light would be travelling through a smaller volume of atmosphere. We could even build sequences of them. Several that are far away and catching light that wouldn't even have reached Earth can fire beams into one near the edge of the atmosphere and direct it to a turbine. They would re-orient themselves in space to face the sun and redirect the light to the same spot. The beam would probably not be hot enough to effectively assassinate people, though that would be cool. It would probably just rapidly start heating up an area about five feet around like a big magnifying glass and you could step out of it.

[Little me]

Um, let me see.
There is a instance X who owns land, erects ... engines ... on it, and takes care of them. Then there is a bunch of people supporting the instance by giving money to them. As a return, the instance gives the money it receives from selling the electricity generated to the people who invested in it (the selling of electricity service would naturally also be taken care of by this maintainer-instance.)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this precisely how a stock-company works? You just invented the electric company!

[Prashanth J]

Scott,

Well presented but this is exactly what Suzlon - The wind energy firm in India does.This firm operates in Europe and US as well.

http://www.suzlon.com/

This is how it works:

1. The company sets-up the wind turbines in places where there is plenty of wind blowing to generate electricity and have them connected to state electricity grids.
2.Indivisual investors can buy a wind turbine which costs about 200 thousand dollars.
3.Banks finance the investor to buy the turbine.
4. Since the Indian government have a rule that at least 10% of the state electricity consumption has to come from renewable energy resources, state electricity boards buy eectricity from Suzlon.
5. The returns which come from this turbines electricity generation is almost 30-40% more than the bank installment which investor has to pay. So the investor starts to make profit from the very first month.
6.The Suzlon owner Tulsi Tanti has made a huge fortune in around 10 years he is in wind energy business.
He is one of the richest men in world according to Forbes.
http://www.forbes-global.com/lists/2006/10/QD9Q.html

It's a win-win situation for all and earth.

I am with you. we have a proven idea.

-prashanth

[Prashanth J]

Scott,

Well presented but this is exactly what Suzlon - The wind energy firm in India does.This firm operates in Europe and US as well.

http://www.suzlon.com/

This is how it works:

1. The company sets-up the wind turbines in places where there is plenty of wind blowing to generate electricity and have them connected to state electricity grids.
2.Indivisual investors can buy a wind turbine which costs about 200 thousand dollars.
3.Banks finance the investor to buy the turbine.
4. Since the Indian government have a rule that at least 10% of the state electricity consumption has to come from renewable energy resources, state electricity boards buy eectricity from Suzlon.
5. The returns which come from this turbines electricity generation is almost 30-40% more than the bank installment which investor has to pay. So the investor starts to make profit from the very first month.
6.The Suzlon owner Tulsi Tanti has made a huge fortune in around 10 years he is in wind energy business.
He is one of the richest men in world according to Forbes.
http://www.forbes-global.com/lists/2006/10/QD9Q.html

It's a win-win situation for all and earth.

I am with you. we have a proven idea.

-prashanth

[CPB]

If we transfer our addiction from foreign oil to an addiction for penis engines, the terrorists will have truly won. Morally at least.

[Amit]

Scott a great idea and a mind(sss) erecting way to present that.
Anyways i see one more change that should be made. Why cant this penis act as a normal one? I mean why should it be always erect? After all i don't think you carry a complete "erecto" under your pants even whiling pooping. So lets keep it simple. It erects only only when its daylight.

Anyways, sun's the dude that turns it on. Isn't it?

[DDReynolds]

Fantastic...Bring 'em on! Perhaps you could up the revenue by partnering with companies that make products like Viagra or that sell condoms. Just think how it would look from space - giant penis encased in a branded Trojan...

[rita mae]

I agree with Dingo's comment. Especially the part where he tells Chad to get a life.

Your blog can be about anything you want. But, then, you already know that don't you? Why don't people go to another blog if they don't like what you have on yours?

Keep on keepin' on, Scotty. And thanks to Dingo. (By the way, Dingo, bring back my baby that you took from my yard. BWAHAHAHA)

Rita Mae

[jerry w.]

The idea of having a giant penis is very scary, considering how many of my every day decisions are already being made for me by my just slightly larger than normal one.

http://boskolives.wordpress.com/

[Chris Rollason]

Being in the UK. Can I invest in the US large Penis scheme?

I'd also like to invest in one in Australia and possibly India too.

That way I'd mostly be covered 24 hours of the day, making profit somewhere in the world. As one timezone moves into darkness, I can just switch my screen to the next one and continue to watch my profits grow.

Oh yes!!!!!!!!!!!

In your honour I think the US government should "erect" a huge statue of you with a suitably large penis.

[Tatter]

From Alice in Wonderland.

"Maybe huge clitoris engines could be researched a little more and longer"

Yeah, like a male engineer know what THAT looks like.
He would never find it once it was made anyway :)

[random]

Chad, was that actually a serious post? You really think every blogger should mention the attack every year on 11th September. Is it not enough to have every newspaper and tv channel covering it, with pretty much the same content as they used the previous year (which is what they seem to do in UK). It is okay to blog on other topics. Particulary as this is a humour site not a serious political discussion site.

[Bilious Prudence]

I like it -- sounds like a plan!

BP

[Iain]

HR Giger could do something with those I feel.

[Tom Gao]

I don't think there's enough vacant desert to fit all them penises.

[Anfauglir]

These punchline setups get longer and longer.....

For decades, guys have bought flashy cars as penis substitutes. Now they can buy actual giant penises. I guess it was bound to happen one day.

[Dmitry Z]

Well, I shall buy that PP franchise to operate in my country. If anything, there are a lot deserts in it... Thanks for the idea.

[Fritz P.]

Update on my previous comment: it appears the project is still quite alive. Green Wombat reported about it last June:

http://blogs.business2.com/greenwombat/2007/06/big_solar_stirl.html

There's some good news and some bad news. The bad news is those stirling engines don't look like penises at all. The good news is the construction as a whole does have certain erect phallic qualities to it. If you're gifted with a dirty mind, that is. Just follow that URL and look at the pictures...

[choseph]

Do it. I've always thought the monitoring was a big issue gone from conservation too. I want to see my week by week power consumption broken down for me too so I can see that turning off X had a positive impact. Monitoring is huge, especially for a competetive society.

You'll also want to be able to monitor your penis in other units. When just looking at the numbers, watching watt hours will look more impressive. Many people can't relate watt hours, but I think they'll just want to watch numbers spin anyway. Or, translate it into hours-on-a-bycicle (I was just about to post about this) -- saving $2 per year sounds like a waste, but saving 150 hours on a bike sounds quite nice. I wouldn't skip using my dryer for 50 cents a load, but if you told me it took 30 hours on a bike to generate that I'd go on my energy diet.

Once you had the infrastructure, you could even have people join in on a threesome to fund one penis if the cost per penis ($/8=D) was too high.

Relevant words in this post: threesome, unit, load, impressive

[Andrew P]

Wow.

I (and many others here) have known about this technology for years, but you seemed completely oblivious to it until a penis-shaped design was published on Wikipedia.

Why, Scott?

[Fritz P.]

Great post, you naughty person you ;-)

Interesting idea as well. But the Wired article is dated November 2005 and the most recent 'Breaking News' on SES' website is from late December 2006. Has this project (the solar/stirling farm I mean, not Scott's vision of a penis plant) actually materialized yet?

[Rofa]

Actually, in response to Chad's complaint that you didn't write about 9/11 instead, wouldn't this, in the long term / best case scenario, be a way to reduce the risk of something like 9/11 happening again?

To wit: these giant penis engine farms would reduce the United States' reliance on foreign oil for energy, which, as I'm sure most would agree, is indirectly one of the major factors leading to the events of 9/11.

[Edwin]

Oooooh, I love it when you talk dirty.

[twounicycles]

I used to help to design specialist erection aid equipment. You know the kind of thing frames, hoists etc :-)

With respect to 9/11 terrorist attack. I'm a Brit, I was in Philadelphia and I watched the second aircraft strike on a plasma screen in the dining area of the local pipeline company. That's when we knew it wasn't an accident. It looked like a Holywood movie. It is so much easier to destroy than to create.

[GP]

Your idea is already being implemented albeit in the wind-energy sector in Asia (and as somebody else has already commented, in Europe too). Big companies are setting up windmill farms and selling individual windmills to high-networth individuals or smaller companies. The icing on the cake is that you get massive tax-breaks too.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/070824/32/6jw1k.html

I'm not sure though whether the real-time profit counter/video idea has (yet) been implemented.

But I still think most guys (given the choice) would prefer to own a giant penis rather than a bland old windmill. ;-)

[Seth]

What's a bet your government cuts off the penis instead? Your best chance is to wait until after the elections and then only if you lot vote in a Democrat.

[The Sound of KOINK]

Why am I limp?

[Marxist]

it's time to make some porno movies.

[Marxist]

it's time to make some porno movies.

[chris]

Scott, I think you must have enjoyed the opportunity to type "penis" so often in a scientific/benefit the world context, - are you trawling the waters for the easily offended?
Can the company produce one shaped like Jesus?

[Attie Naude]

Best idea I've heard all year.

Where do I sign up?

[Laura]

Wow. He's either really good at finding funny stories or he's really good at making normal stories funny.

Personally, I'd love to power my comuter with a large penis.

[Akshay]

The ownership model you suggest has been in existing for wind energy for quite some time and has been responsible for generating large investments in the sector. Regulatory measures like the Production Tax Credit, accelerated depreciation, tax holidays, etc ensure that the investments keep coming in and that wind power is cost-competitive with conventional sources.

The bit on online monitoring and information display is difficult to implement, since useful electricity generated depends on grid availability, in addition to wind conditions. It would definitely be cool, though!

[exiledsurveyor]

Ah, renewable energy.

There's a reason it's expensive.

If you build a 1,000 MW coal plant, it runs all day and night, giving you an average of 975-990 MW with shutdowns.

If you build a 1,000 MW wind farm, you get about 300 MW, plus you will probably have to build another 1,000 MW power plant to supply energy when the wind doesn't blow (because someone still wants the power, even when on calm days). Don't mention all of the fat happy coyotes and not so happy dead birds.

If you build a 1,000 MW solar farm, obviously you will get less than 500 MW, plus again, you will have to have another plant to supply power during the night. Admittedly, this would help with peak usage during the day for nearby cities, but you might have to turn the tv off after dark.

Aside from that, I'm with you, we need to get renewable energy online, and a good scam artist should be able to start something up to make himself a lot of money and his customers not so much money. Kinda like time shares.

Plus, I note that this company has no recent press releases, so obviously the project has been stalled. The original article was in 2005.

[Luke]

These penises just keep on giving.

[Bratty McBrattyPants]

Could I pay extra to have them exagerate my performance?

[Jeff Keys]

You had me grinning throughout that whole post, but by the time I got to the last line, I lost it.

[Neal Miskin]

Y'know, I should have seen that erection punchline coming a mile away, but I didn't. Now I feel like an idiot. Thanks Scott.

--Neal

[Avi Bernshaw]

Scott, surely you're now influential enough within the Science & Engineering community to be able to start this particular venture up on your own.

After all, everyone knows your a canny business person, that you've got enough technical understanding of these things to know what is and isn't possible, and you've got scads of geekarisma (it's like charisma, but for geeks, without the whole dice rolling and +4 enchantments [as in, it works in the "real-world"]).

You'd easily be able to convince people to run this.

But let me tell you of an even better location for this venture... The Australian outback, particularly the Simpson Desert. Temperatures often exceed 60C, and the Australian public would be behind any plan involving large penises simply because our country is already run by one!

[D. Mented]

...and then there's the fact that every man who owns one can honestly say:
"I have a gigantic penis!"(wanna see?)
D. Mented

[Brian Miller]

Late at night and I have a bunch left to do, so short comment.

Stirling engines are External Combustion engines. Simply speaking a external heat source is applied, and the difference in temperature causes engine to transduce heat transfer into power. (You can figure out theory of ops, but point being is it is a heat engine (wiki it). so technology works, but instead of internal fuel, any significant temperatur change would run it (say in space, where side facing sun would be hella hot (to use the technical term, he he he) and the side facing away would be hella cold.

Point being, anywhere there is excess heat, or cold for that matter, is a power source. so Waste heat could be re-used. Hot discharge water, cold river. Instead of dumping thermal waste, capture the power? How about hot springs? Etc.

Stirling is so cool. I made one as a kid, I figure it was about 2 watts and was way huge (hydraulic cyclinder for body) but neat. Unfortunately they are heavy, and thus expensive, and still really ineffiecent and frankly most of the companies involved with making them are more interested in keeping the govt grant gravy train rolling instead of actually solving the problems.

THink about it, if you solve the problem, no more grants, and you have no job anymore. Um talk about bad motivation. "why are you unemployed?" "um, I solve the problems at my last company, so we lost the govt grants and the technology was turned over to the chinese to manufacture, so hire me, and maybe I can make you unemployed too!"

Back to work, end of rant.

Peace

[karan]

Tangentially related, Stirling engines were also mentioned in this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf4gOS8aoFk - where a man has discovered a way to make salt water "burn", a possible solution for our fossil-fuel dependency :)

[Joe Tao]

Thanks for the info about Stirling engines Scott. Although you don't hear about this technology very often here in the States, there are quite a few european companies in the sterling engine business. One of them is Kockums, you gotta love a company that makes Sterling engines and trades under the name Kockums, talk about penis envy. Everything about them screams penis. Just look at the sterling engine powered submarines they have developed(non-nuclear)at http://www.kockums.se/Submarines/aipstirling.html

[Al Newberry]

Hmm. And here I was thinking my ugly self would never profit with my Giant Penis.

[Sean]

Admitedly you did warn that the wiki diagram looked like a penis, but I was still surprised at how much it does.

[sung]

oy... all that for the one punchline.

[brian]

use the energy created by your penis energy engine to fix Atmospheric Carbon dioxide sell the results as carbon offsets?

[Bill Walker]

>However, if you told me I could own my own clean energy generator, and make money too, almost guaranteed, I’d be all over it.

Scott... you're a zillionaire. You can own your own generator, even a nuclear generator (which is a lot "greener" than covering up half the nation with collector panels... that "desert" could be green too, you know)... anytime you want.

Just get out that funny little book from the bank with the tear-out sheets, and start writing.

[Erik]

I don't know much about business, but this actually sounds like a really, really good idea. You should patent it or something.

I know I want a giant penis.

[Arby]

You have a lingering interest in renewable energy as a way out of energy dependence and lower energy cost. What mostly stops the ball rolling is when confronted with the realistic up-front cost of the system. It is interesting that it is forgotten how much Westinghouse and Edison had to spend on generation and infrastructure to get their electric systems working. Anyone asked today to invest in any significant renewable energy infrastructure considered it too much money. If Westinghouse and Edison and their investors had that attitude we would still be using gas lights, candles and whale oil lanterns and the industrial revolution would have fizzled.

The first cost is substantial but it is not out of reason. Mainly this is because these renewable energy power plants are proprietary and are built small and close to the user, in other words, decentralize power production making it less subject to massive failure. These local power plants do not need the extra capacity for transmitting power across a large, very expensive power-draining and vulnerable grid.

Sterling engines or any steam turbines fueled by a solar heated medium are already in operation and have been tested. To a certain degree each of these systems has an optimal size and site that works for it. Wind energy is appropriate in some circumstances. The problem with all of them is operating cost and they put heat into the environment. They all have a bunch of moving parts and we know what that means, things break and wear out.

A much better solution is one that runs on solar power but has very few, if any, moving parts that are subject to heat, corrosion or pressure. This by definition is photovoltaic (PV). Expensive now but if massed produced in the right setting they could outperform all the above system over time especially as technology improves.

In a previous blog you suggested going to the desert building the plants using the sand to make silicon and panels harvesting the sun for power. It could be done if plants that manufacture the solar grade silicon and panels are sited there also. Everything will be located in one spot. Once the first ones are built they could be cloned around the country and the world. Massed produced, the cost per kilowatt/megawatt would fall substantially.

All of this can be set up as a private company, stockholder held producing profits which are more assured because of the lower maintenance and operating cost of a solar PV plant. There is no solar plant on a grand scale today that you envision and it won’t be built until people get over trying to outsmart George and Thomas and the public utilities. Be glad to share with you a business plan written three years ago spelling all this out.

[David Haywood]

My Ph.D. is in Stirling cycle thermodynamics, but from now on I shall refer to myself as a doctor of penisology (although only one of the systems I've designed has looked anything like a penis).

As far as I've been able to figure out, Stirling engines are perhaps best suited (from an economic point of view) to micro-combined heat and power generation (micro-CHP) rather than solar -- in other words, they offer the advantage of being efficient even at small sizes, and can easily capture usable heat that would be lost from other types of engine. Properly-designed Stirling machines have the additional advantage of being very quiet (about as loud as a dishwasher) and can be manufactured for very long lifetimes.

In a lot of countries a suitably enviromentally-friendly fuel for micro-CHP Stirling engines is wood pellets (a biofuel made from wood waste -- which, I guess, is indirect use of solar energy).

FYI a company that manufactures Stirling engines for micro-CHP applications is WhisperGen in New Zealand:

http://www.whispergen.com

P.S. Does anyone find it suspicious that Ned (who claims to have worked on "Sterling" engines) can't even spell 'Stirling'? Beware of those who make claims about "unlimited free energy", I'd say.

[MB]

Thermodynamically speaking (and I'm a mechanical engineer, so I can do that) the amount of work by any thermodynamic process depends directly on the difference in temperatures between the source (hot side) and the sink (cold side). The diagram for this Sterling configuration shows a directly heated source (perhaps reflected solar light) and a fluid-cooled sink. The most efficient way to cool this guy would probably be geothermal. Therefore, I propose that, to increase our profits, we run coolant supply lines (we'll call them the vas deferens) to the underground reservoir (the prostate) in order to keep our engine happy and efficient. Anatomically correct - and good engineering!

[Chris Greiner]

BEST IDEA EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I would love to do something like that ....too bad with your luck someone else already came up with it. :(

[Geek]

Bleep! Blog marked as spam. Ignore?

Investment, erect, penis: spam assurance 7.9

[Tom]

Did you think of that last line first, and then write the entire blog post just so you could say that?

[Neil B]

It seems like the waste heat from every nuclear plan should be harvested with these. The water is still plenty darned hot after exiting the turbine. With heat form the reactor on one side and the planet as a heatsink on the other Stirling engines seem like a natural fit (based on thinking about it for all of 10 seconds mind you….)

[henry]

read Fighting Globesity

[Andre in LA]

Mentioning the word penis 12 times in a post about investment... I can just see the mass emails announcing investment opportunities for the giant penis farm stock.

[djh]

Your money counter never runs backward? How about when a giant sandstorm comes in and destroys it or those shiny surfaces get all scratched up. Yeah when those maintenance costs start rolling in and the company doing it losses no money from lack of cost control I bet those meters start running backward

[Greg]

That actually sounds like a really good idea.

I mean, aside from the fact that it looks like an infestation of giant dongs on the landscape. Though that's kind of cool, in it's own way, too.

[Thomas]

Great. More spam for some Penis enlargement stuff coming along. Thanks!

[Sean]

There would also almost certainly be competition among individuals or even companies about who had the biggest... er, Stirling engine.

[DanW]

I bet you could get corporate sponsorship for this project - the makers of Viagra and Cialis would get into a huge bidding war for naming rights. Can you imagine 6 huge phallic engines with the the letters V I A G R A on them?

[Joel]

All that for such a tacky punchline. I love it.

[Alice in Wonderland]

Sweet.

[rita mae]

I went to Wikipedia and read up on the Stirling system. One of the lines in their explanation is as follows:

"A stirling system cannot start instantly; it literally needs to warm up."

It might be shaped like a penis, but that sure sounds girlie to me. Never saw or heard of a penis that couldn't start instantly. Oops, that's right, not everyone knows or is married to an ex-Marine.

This comment makes up for my last one where I requested prayers to St. Anthony for Scott M.

Perhaps huge penis engines aren't the answer as you suggest. Maybe huge clitoris engines could be researched a little more and longer. Thanks a lot.

Scott, still love you, but still too old to stalk you.

[Paul Mckenna]

For those of us who are in cold climates the Stirling Engine can use external sources of heat. So think of all those landfill sites generating methane that have to be tapped off. Straight away you have an income source until the site stabilises or explodes.

I used to work in decontamination of building sites.
My weapon of choice was the Word Processor.

Paul

[Cochrane]

Such a long, at times even interesting post, only for this single punchline. I am truly amazed. Me pointing out that Stirling engines don't have to look like that, and that it takes a really dirty mind to see that in them (I didn't before), would only destroy the magic.

[Wickwrackrum]

nice. But sort of reminds me of the gyrocycle or whatever called 'it' invented by Mr.Garrison from the south park cartoon. Although it is symmetrical and nice, why does it have to be shaped like genitalia ?? Why do you have to pick up on it and keep harpin on it?

Like howard hughes from the aviator movie, non-renewable resources like these are 'the way of the future...the way of the future....the way of the future...the way of the future...

the way of the future'.

[Bill]

One downside is that you'd have to pay ongoing maintenance for your penis generator, so you would, indeed, see your profit going down during the night.

And, whatever company built these things wouldn't price them such that an individual investor would be seeing huge daily returns on their investment. For an investment of $5,000, for example (as someone posted), you'd be expecting to see a profit of $500 per year. That's about $1.50 a day or about a dime an hour (during daylight). That would hardly make for exciting internet viewing.

I mean, if you could invest $5,000 and then make $2,000 a year, the big boys would all grab the investments and us little guys would have no chance.

[Manu Sharma]

One more thing...although it's a great idea, I don't share your enthusiasm for public acceptance of this. People like to show off solar panels on their roof. A solar dish somewhere out in the desert somehow isn't very exciting. Out of sight, out of mind thing. You can't broadcast a webcam feed to your neighbors and passers by.

Nothing lets you gloat "green" like having panels on your rooftop. It's a powerful thing.

To give you an example, when the previously mentioned company (Green and Gold Energy) announced on its Yahoo discussion list that it's going the solar-farm-you-can-own way instead of letting people install them on rooftops, there was total outrage on the list. Almost everyone totally rejected the idea. Eventually, the company decided to take both the routes. It's launching by end of this year.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prn%0Aews/070829/nyw060.html

[LA Clay]

In Penis related news, you hear about Nizameddine Chokr? He's serving five years for repeatedly masturbating in public. You have got to love California!

[Manu Sharma]

*Serious comment alert*

Scott, a company in Australia beat you to it. Green and Gold Energy is already in the process of establishing such farms where consumers would be able to buy capacity. Their solar farms however are not based on Sterling engines, but multi-junction photovoltaic solar concentrators. It's actually a more effective utilisation of solar power than the engines.
http://www.greenandgoldenergy.com.au/

That said, I must commend your ability to come up with awesome business ideas under the guise of wacky ones.

BTW, the sterling engine solar farms look nothing like giant penises...
http://www.stirlingengines.org.uk/sun/sola4.html

[Mike]

One in the sand is worth two in the mush.

[Bri]

I agree--Energy independence is vital for this country. I hope this thread is taken seriously and isn't consumed by posts filled with cheap double entendres involving penises. So let's stop dicking around, get on it and how it comes out.

[wrench]

I'm poor so I need a quicker ROI than any current or near future solar technology can provide. But if a bunch of rich liberal tree-huggers want to subsidize my electricity with their giant penises I will applaud the effort. I'm off to invest in defense stocks and fossil fuel futures.

[mark]

I'd call my investment "Johnson"

I think Pfizer-Viagra would invest to erect them with their logo's on them. "Viagra--working hard all day for you" or "We don't quit while the sun shines" could be their new slogan.

This is a flash of genius.

And while...this may be indelicate...the stirling beta engines resemble the stamen of a flower...perhaps the dish could be reshaped with a practical shape that gives equal billing to the beautiful female form.

You could bill webcam time on that one for extra money!

cheers,
Mark

[Michael]

Interesting find Scott. I want a personal 4 or 5 kilowatt version I can put in my backyard! This will hopefully be very exciting in about 10 years.

[Joe Testosterone]

I just like saying "giant penis engines". I gotta invest in this.
"How did you make your money?"
"Giant Penis Engines"

http://testosterone-zone.com

[StEvE]

I have an even better idea that you made me think of. The masturbation generator.

You just hook up a weighted flywheel/generator gizmo to the arm of every teenage boy in the country. Then every hour when he disappears for some "me time" the motion of his arm sends the flywheels spinning which turns the shaft on a generator.

I think we'd be off fossil fuels within a week.

[Jeffro]

1) Something bad happens.
2) "Never forget mm/dd" propaganda.
3) 0.274% of your year spent never forgetting or writing about anything else in your blog on mm/dd.
4) Something bad happens again.
5) "Never forget mm/dd #2" propaganda.
6) 0.548% of your year spent never forgetting or writing about anything else in your blog on mm/dd and mm/dd #2.
Wash, rinse, repeat.

You cannot claim an entire day of the year to remember your event. Let's stop the madness.

[Jeff]

I have a better idea, instead of buying individual engines, how about if an abstract legal entity owns the engines, and individuals just own "shares" in that entity. That way you don't need one-investoer-per-penis-engine, giving much more flexibility. If this idea works, it could potentially be applied to other businesses as well.

[James Wimberley]

Does it spoil things to point out that the engine was invented by the Reverend Dr. Robert Stirling, a Presbyterian minister of the Church of Scotland, in 1816?

[James Wimberley]

Does it spoil things to point out that the engine was invented by the Reverend Dr. Robert Stirling, a Presbyterian minister of the Church of Scotland, in 1816?

[Shane Ash]

I've got engineering in my blood. I'm going to attempt to make this thing personal. If the engine design is two centuries old, I'm pretty sure I could build one of my own to fit in my backyard and then add a mirror to it. And a motor to turn it with the sun. And then build a kickass water fountain enclosure over the engine part to keep it quiet and make it look pretty.

[Jerry Ham]

So, for people wanting the "do it yourself" kit - would that be an "erector set"? And if people needed some help doing it, then it may be the add-on product v1a6ra? Or maybe just some good, old fashioned, pron?

[Venkatdeep]

That sure would be a giant erection...
Interesting concept...But here in India,by the time it gets through the red tape the erection would hav gone down to needing a six pack of double dose viagra!!

cheers

[Tybuc]

Weird, I was thinking no more than three days ago about something like this. Sadly not giant penis engines, which would make for a way better anecdote, but about using reflective satellite dish shaped panels to focus solar power. I think it has something to do with growing up out in the stix where 15 years ago things shaped like that were how all my neighbors got Hee Haw. It seemed like it would be easier harnessing sunlight if you could compress it into a smaller area somehow instead of against a flat surface, which has less energy potential per square inch of real estate. Considering how often any of my ideas have any value to myself much less the world at large, your post about coincidences now seems unusually relevant. I was thinking of making a pretty big non-anonymous donation to the people in charge of making simulation projects. You know, as an insurance policy.

[disembodied consciousness]

There's already a company like this, but using photovoltaics. They install a solar collector on your roof for free, and you agree to buy the power from the solar collector at a set rate. Basically their business is to finance the cost of the collector.

[Mark Thorson]

Why do they have to be all in
one place? Why not locate
them close to the power
consumers, to minimize losses
in distribution and power
outtages due to interruptions
in the grid? If a big cloud
passes over your engine farm,
1000 megawatts suddenly goes
off-line. But if they engines
are dispersed all over the
country, only night will take
the whole output down to zero.

Let's see the maintenance cost
before jumping in on this.
Any mechanical system is going
to have significant cost to
keep it running.

[Hasemörder Kønig]

I knew Africa was going to be the most important continent. Little did I know, it actually was all about size.

[Berimbauone]

One marketing strategy for the giant penises you WANT TO AVOID is ambiguous mass emailings:

"From the honorable Dr. Matumbo Anikwe, Lagos, Nigeria - Do you Lu$t for make $weet money from home? Stirling PeN1$ machine for deliver more energy, thicker, richer investments. Kindly send money now"

"Please your wom@n with Stirling pEn!$ m@chine, eRect!oNs of new dream home with profit$$!"

"just approved by government: in its tEEn development stages, So sexy barely legal investment on Stirling 9eN1$ m@ch!Ne"

I think the spam filters would deny many worthy folk this investment opportunity.

http://berimbauone.blogspot.com/

[Jabba]

I have two red-hot Polish girls living with me for the next month. Way ahead of you on the penis-erection thing right now. Get back to me in 6 weeks, when I can finally concentrate again, and I'm sure I'll be in.

[JoNa]

Scott,Scott,Scott. The environmental protesters are at this very moment painting their sign's, "Down With the Solar Penis," and "No Erect Penises in My Back Yard!"

Have you checked the price of desert real estate lately? A lot of us retired old farts are building homes there, and land formerly left to the rattle snakes, scorpions, and coyotes has more than tripled in price in the past ten years. You couldn't make a profit on your penis farm, even if you could get a permit for its erection.

[ND]

Of course, if you follow your idea to its logical conclusion, you'd probably see some people investing in bigger penis engines, to maximize their income. The size of your penis engine could become a status symbol. And I wonder if black ones would be more efficient, since they reflect less heat energy?

[matt]

Show me where to sign up!

[Robert Phillips]

Scott, the one problem with your plan is that it doesn't take into account economics. If the entry barriers were lowered for producing power (ie. limited capital required, fewer government regulations, no technical ability required, etc), then more and more people would start these 'penises' in order to make money. Assuming demand for energy is held constant two things will happen;

1) the cost to produce will increase as more 'penises' are built rent will increase, maintenance prices will increase (since there is more demand for replacement parts and services), etc, and

2) your profit will decrease as more competitors come on the market with the same product, at some point we will exceed demand. At that point some 'penis' owners will accept a lower profit margin, selling the power for less money, in order to differentiate themselves. Soon enough people progressively charge less and less until you are making just enough money to cover costs.

These two economic concepts would pretty much render this (in the long run) to be a bad investment as you would have no way to establish and maintain a competitive advantage over all the other 'penises' that would inevitably come onto the market.

[Adam]

While I acknowledge the humor value of something which can be referred to as a "penis engine", it should be pointed out that this particular design isn't economical. There is no guaranteed return - quite the contrary, there are large maintenance costs, in addition to the large fixed costs of installation. You'd be very lucky to be able to turn a profit selling enough electricity with those things to pay for the financing and maintenance of the original investment.

This is not to say that solar power isn't a good idea. Just think bigger penises - say, at least 40 meters tall. I'm talking about the big central-receiver mirror field designs, like the old Solar One, and more updated designs like PS10 and its competitors.

[Evan]

This is a ver good idea. As for all the people saying it's "now new," well, that depends where you live. The utility company that serves my area won't pay me even if I give back more electricity to the grid than I use. So for someone like myself with no financial incentive to generate extra electricity with solar/wind/wahtever, this would be a big thing.

[Jackrabbit]

I WANT ONE!!!

[Debi]

Really? All that build-up for an "erect penis" joke? 8-)

[dave]

bored.

[Ned]

Dude

I worked with Sterling engines in the desert in the early 90s - a "demonstration unit" at UNLV that I had set up is still operating.

We used them to focus intense sun energy on water to "crack" it into its' byproducts - oxygen and hydrogen - the hydrogen for pure fuel (cars can run safely on hydrogen, electrical generator plants can burn it cleanly for energy, etc.) - the waste product? Oxygen.

Best of all, a Sterling engine is about the size of a V-8 but not so complex - anybody who can manufacture a V-8 auto engine can make a better Sterling engine.

This would be ideal for desert regions (lots of sun, usually an ocean nearby) - it could produce almost unlimited free energy - when hydrogen burns, it combines with oxygen to form water (the waste product of hydrogen burning). In fact (and from tests), cars running on hydrogen actually purify the ambient air - they pull in smog and put out crap-free water vapor as the exhaust. Talk about environmentally friendly - the more hydrogen we burn in car engines, the better the environment - and the only waste is water vapor, which converts to rain, which becomes water that we can crack into oxygen and hydrogen using the energy of the sun.

Closed loop.

If you (seriously) want to know more, contact UNLV's Desert Research Institute - their test model's been up and running (and essentially un-funded) since '92.

Ned

[jerry w.]

In the Wikipedia defination, it says: "In this context, "closed-cycle" means that the working fluid is permanently contained within the system..."

Actually, when ones "working fluid" is PERMANENTLY contained, it would more correctly be called a "Blue Ball" system than a "closed-cycle" one, and with some expertise in this mode of operation, it is certainly not high on my list of things to invest time or money into.

There has to be some sort of (ahem..) solution, perhaps to be called the happy ending cycle, to be added to the final design. I suppose it could be used as a form of self maintenance during those long non-productive nights.

One reporters opinion.

http://boskolives.wordpress.com/

[Hmm...]

Great idea. If you are worried about profit-counter slowing down at nights, why not invest some in actual penises - internet porn. That might do even better.

[Guardian]

Actually, farmers in New York are already making fortunes with wind power going into the grid. For a fifty thousand dollar investment, it pays for itself in the first year, and every day after that is pure profit.
Some cattle farmers just lease the space to the power company. That's several thousands of dollars every month to screw the big bad oil companies. It doesn't seem to make that much difference to the cows either.

[LA Clay]

"working fluid is permanently contained within the system"

This is like an intelligent rock, being big and hard is useless without proper relief. Now if you could get them to went once and a while....

[Shan]

So if I erect a penis, does that mean I'm helping humanity? I think I helped humanity two or three times last night.

But anyway... I think that this is actually a very plausible idea (and I'm usually one of the guys who comments on why your ideas won't work or who has already come up with the idea). I think you should patent it or whatever it is that you do to protect ideas like this... and then sell it to a company that has the resources to make it happen.

[Dingo]

Dear Choad, (as Dogbert would write)

What gives with your comment? Where on this site does it say that Scott Adams represents Democrats everywhere, or that he offers heartfelt insights on contemporary events? In case you hadn't noticed, this is a HUMOR blog, and people come to it hoping to find funny anecdotes and reflections on things that Scott finds amusing, and this post is precisely that.

There are many other sites you can go to for moving tributes to commemorate the event that happened six years ago. Why should anyone be forced to write something about a sad event, just because he has a public forum?

[G]

[Chad: Sorry Scott, but I'm disgusted with your post today...not because of the content in it, but because of the lack of specific content.]

Back off man. Blogs are about recording your thoughts and ideas. Who the hell are you to instruct what anyone should think or write about?

[HALiverpool]

I have heard of the Stirling engine. I read about it last week in, believe it or not, "Road and Track" magazine.

There's also a project under construction in Nevada that uses solar power to heat oil which then runs a steam engine to generate electricity (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5733830). Of course it's not as funny because it doesn't look like a penis, but it may still be a good investment.

Then again, when the demand for oil goes down so will the price.

-HAL

[tatiana]

But...but...if somebody gets to have a big, hard penis that gives you money, then everybody'll want one! Think of the children!

Heh heh. Gimme gimme gimme! I want LOTS of these!

[G]

Can I just erect my own? I don't want to go in with a bunch of people. It's about time it started paying it's way.

[tjomas]

Are there any shapes at all that we can't turn into something kinky? I haven't seen one yet.

[Joshua Jacobsen]

It's pretty similar to something a coworker and I were discussing about six months ago. Given the dismal state of photovoltaics, our conclusion at the time was that a parabolic mirror and stirling engine were the most reasonable way to generate electricity from sunlight. However, with space constraints around densely populated areas, we concluded that it couldn't be a reasonable fossil fuel replacement for the majority of people.

I'm holding high hopes for thermal depolymerization. It has all the environmental drawbacks of fossil fuels, but at least it's renewable.

[Phoenix]

_NEVER_ confuse mood swings with strategic brilliance…

[Real Live Girl]

I already know how to erect a penis. But if this one can help save the world, count me in. Just let me know where and when to send the check.

[Chad]

"Unlike stocks, your profits would never reverse direction."

Ummm, wouldn't they reverse direction in the beginning, say -$10,000,000 to begin with? Or are these machines competitively priced with the playstation?

Great idea...makes me feel all yummy inside for helping the environment and getting back at the big, bad, oil companies...(sarcastically said with a liberal whine)

Sorry Scott, but I'm disgusted with your post today...not because of the content in it, but because of the lack of specific content. Today is a sad, historic day to be remembered, and I was initially surprised to not find you writing about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or remembering those that were murdered that day. But then I read your whole post and realized that with the Democrats it's about how things make you feel and 9/11 doesn't make you feel good so you ignore it, or pretend it didn't happen, or that it really was our fault. This post is the ideal post to represent this. First you have individuals versus big business. You throw in a little sex. Saving the environment. You've even got recycling. But the big picture is not about the practicality of the idea...it's the fact that it makes me feel good if I do it.

[Zzyzxmo]

yeah, great concept. BUT; it relies on Mother Natures mood swings. If there's a cloud in the sky...

[Boozeheimer]

I forgot to mention that the windgenerators are often called aspargus here.

[Boozeheimer]

Dear Scott,
Sorry to tell you that once again your idea is not new at all. It is the reality here in Europe with e.g. wind power generators or photovoltaic devices on houses. The mostly private owners feed the electricity generated into the public grid and get a fixed (even subsidised) price for it. And of course they can monitor their daily production and count the bucks earned. In the rural areas it's a big business for farmers to let land for energy production. After wind generators the latest and rapidly growing hit is biogas. Isn't that really great? They make money (energy) out of bullshit!

[The Chief]

I'll go erect a huge one right now.

[Jon]

What if they attracted giant sexually frustrated female aliens?

THEN you'd have some energy to harvest!

[Michael]

This sounds like a great idea, and I'd be in for it too. However, what are the costs of these penis engines?
I would imagine they'd be a bit too expensive for the average person to own one outright. You could probably sink a few million into one of your own, but I'd have to go in with multiple investors to buy one.

[Phoenix]

Hey-- I'm up for it. ;)

[jay]

I'd be happy to have you erect a penis for me, but with my luck of late, it would be the one that always flopped over and didn't work :<

[Jeff B]

Damn, Scott, that's actually a brilliant idea! I know I sure as hell would sign up for it.

[E]

That photo from Wikipedia was just hysterical.

But yes, assuming a buy-in for a penis plant (or a significant part of one) for 5 to 10 grand... you could get a boatload of people to buy in.

I would. This is the best practical idea I've seen yet on your blog - and the giant penis shapes are just a delicious bonus.

[Telanis]

Oh dear.

[DanW]

I am really excited about this idea. I want to invest in a large Penis. There maybe a bunch of people already with this idea - I get a dozen emails per day inquiring if I want a large penis.

[Diana W]

Sure, you just want to be able to say that you have a 25' long penis that services millions. I'm guessing that guys everywhere will invest for the bragging rights alone.