On solar powered refrigerated trucks, Sun-Reefers

Well, I did a little research and came up with the following figures:

A 53 foot long by 8 foot wide reefer container has 424 square feet of roof area.
Typical solar panel efficiencies are in the range of about 10 to 14 watts per square foot.
So we'd get about 424 x 12 = 5,088 watts per truck roof. Assume an average full sun equivalent of 4 hours per day.
5,088 watts x 4 hours = 20,352 watt-hours per day.
Reefer compressors consume 15 to 20 thousand watts when they are on.
So, a truck roof completely covered with panels would provide maybe an hour of compressor use or approximately 3 hours of refrigeration, per day. If you could save a full day's worth of solar collection, and had 100% efficiency - but most inverters and other components add up to maybe 80% total storage/recovery efficiencies. OK, maybe we can get 14 watts per square foot... Total system installed price, with really decent wholesale costs for the equipment, maybe as low as $40,000 to $80,000 per truck. About 80 panels, about 200 watts each.

Average reefer fuel costs run in the range of $6,500/year per truck at $5.00/gallon, (online calculator), with solar providing 1 hour/day of a typical 8 hours per day of diesel (Note: It seems they are basing this on the estimate that the compressor runs about one third of the time, or 8 hours per day. See calculator.)  So solar would provide about (1/8*100) 12.5% of total energy consumed per day: $6,500 x 12.5% = $812.50 savings on diesel fuel per year with solar. The break even would be: $40,000 divided by $812.50/year =  49 years... (without any tax breaks or subsidies or accounting for possible interest earnings if the $40K was kept in the bank, or the interest on a loan for that amount) but the cost of fuel will continue to increase, so the value of the system will also. OK maybe a 30 year payback without tax breaks or  depreciation write offs... about the same result as putting panels on a house or business. What we need is a carbon tax and/or tax breaks and/or subsidies to make this a go... before the diesel is gone. But... by then survivors might just be growing most of their food locally, so the whole point may be moot.

Meanwhile this has been a great example of how much we take the enormous power of cheap fossil fuel energy for granted. 15 to 20 thousand watts to run every refrigerated truck on the road. Doesn't even include hauling up the hills and mountains, that's just for the refrigeration!!! Imagine if it all had to come from bicycle powered generators! That's a lot of hungry slaves pedaling really, really hard for their 1,500 mile iceberg lettuce salads!

Gentlemen: Start your gardens.

Optimism

Business culture demands optimism. Peak Oil is not an optimistic scenario. Therefore it will be ignored, or denied, or ridiculed, or... explained away with fantastic optimistic notions of ever improving innovative technological solutions -- that haven't been invented yet... and are often simply impossible because they violate the laws of physics and/or geological/ecological limits.

But human business or human activity of any sort, if it is to be successful, also demands, actually requires, a solid footing in reality. Determining what is real is often daunting, especially when that reality isn't what we expect or want to see. That is basic human nature. We are happiest when living in a population that experiences an abundant environment, a cornucopia of food and resources.

Yet we are overpopulating, and depleting non-renewable resources to the point of scarcity and expense and contraction of the economy - making ourselves miserable. We need cultural acceptance of a population slim down plan, preferably via birth control, to the point where we can live in an abundant, sustainable way -- on renewable energy and resources. Yes that means big changes... for the better.

So we can be optimistic, we just have to look to the far horizon and understand what it will take to continue human life and all life on Earth deep into the future:
Balancing our demands with the limits to what the Earth and Sun can actually provide to us, virtually forever.

This was originally written as a comment to the article:
Here's What Peak Oil Prophets Are Failing To Consider
There are several very good comments there answering this absurd article of faith.

Deep Delusion

Delusion takes us down this path
Beneath the earth, below the sea
Beyond the reach of you or me
With steel fingered robots we do the math
With their spiny digits we unleash the wrath

Of a long sleeping dragon
Despite its' fire breath and toxic blood
We can't get off this crud
It hauls our wagon

So we go deeply now, and deeper still
So we can still crave the thrill
Of flying fast over the hills
Over the spills
Over the kills
Salivating over our grills
Where our flesh burns

Dream deeply, now only in our dreams
Are there ways to slay these Dragons
Now the answers only exist in our dreams
Wake up and remember them

Possession

Possession is a funny thing... no not the scary zombie movie sort, something much scarier - the delusionary belief that one can possess part of the world... while everyone in the game respects each other's claims, it seems we can congratulate ourselves on successfully dividing reality.

But each time we divide and take away a portion of the whole, destroy its natural interaction with the rest - it ceases to function and overall we are left with less.

Let me be a little clearer: when we take from the Earth or destroy it's natural functions, for the illusion of profit, we reduce the whole.

Only by sharing can we keep it all alive.

Raising Solastalgia

"Solastalgia describes a palpable sense of dislocation and loss that people feel when they perceive changes to their local environment as harmful." ~worldchanging

Without perception, there is no reaction. No solastalgia. It is impossible to perceive the natural environment through television or computer screens. All this news about the Gulf Crisis - the Gulf Oil Crisis - hmmm... the Gulf of Mexico Oil Crisis... well, that's just another news story to most of the human population on Earth. Just another distant abstraction. We've learned how to watch movies. We've conditioned ourselves as spectators. Removed from the people and events and dramas out there. They're cool to the touch. And they don't touch us.

No wonder "they" don't feel it. The sickening world. The death of species. The decline of life. It's all Out There. Who actually goes Out There anymore? Most surf tragic news from a safe distance - through their screens. Their cool screens which can't touch. Another story. Another movie. Some sports. Next!

But soon TV Land will go away. Soon enough, most of the living won't know it ever existed. The inevitable collapse of industrialized civilization due to scarce resources, toxic build up, catastrophic climate change and extinctions -- will probably take TV Land down too.

Maybe then we will feel solastalgia.

Listening Madly

I was listening to the noise of the big city, the rumble of traffic on the road, the sky encompassing roar of jet airliners above -- and realized I was listening to the sounds of burning oil. Burning oil that is causing catastrophic climate alterations and extinctions. The noisy process was impinging on my eardrums. Directly into my body and into my mind, making my soul squirm.

In a big city -- even in rural areas far from big cities -- the noise of industrial civilization is a constant background din. Something 'normal' people are simply supposed to ignore. Normal people are supposed to have more important things to think about and focus on and do. Like making money or spending it. Noticing these noises at all makes a person arguably weird. Obsessing over these sounds, and their meanings, is probably considered a form of madness by modern psychiatry.

We are supposed to ignore the destruction of our home. We are supposed to ignore the commonplace disrespect shown towards living things. We are supposed to deafen ourselves to the rumble... to the never ceasing buzz of our own demise. Or go mad.

What we can Do?

My response to a good article titled: "What You Can Do in Anticipation of Peak Oil" by Charles Hugh Smith:

A refreshingly realistic portrayal of our situation. I fear that most people who live in industrial civilization are going to be caught unprepared - mentally, emotionally, and physically. The vast majority go on believing that the future will be much like the past, with ever advancing technology enabling and even enhancing human life. Very few of us clearly see the portents of the Great Surprise. It seems frivolous to even hope that people will be better able to deal with truth and reality, while suffering from severe shock, than they can now. A major consideration in any Post Peak scenario should include the added obstacles caused by the bulk paralysis of the general population. And the fact that the general population of humans on this planet is deep into overshoot and unsustainable. Given all that, the suggestions in this article would be very useful if we were a rational species living within our ecological limits. Maybe a few will muddle through somehow. That's the best outcome I can hope for. I certainly don't foresee Mother Nature allowing us to continue with 6.8 billion plus. Once there was an ad with the line: "It isn't nice to fool Mother Nature" -- actually it's impossible.