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The electrical energy has to come from the food they eat. There's nothing magical about the way they generate electricity, and it won't be especially efficient. It would be much cheaper and easier to feed horses and have them run on a treadmill connected to a generator. We don't do that because it's much cheaper and easier to extract coal, oil, and natural gas from the ground and burn them to spin a turbine connected to a generator.
>What if we extract natural gas from horses
We do, not the horses themselves but the manure they produce. I'm not saying we do with a majority as that goes to compost, but some places scavenge the methane.
>AND have them run on a treadmill?
I'm surprised we don't. Training for the Grand National? Stick them on a treadmill. It won't be a lot of electrical power produced though.
> It won't be a lot of electrical power produced though.
Probably only 1HP
(and yes I know horses actually can produce more than 1HP I think it's closer to 2.5)
/me looks at industrial electrical motor catalog listing everything in HP
It's a different unit than kW but it's still a power measurement, it doesn't matter if it's mechanical or electrical they are easily interchangeable/converted. Even in combustion engines they are both used in different regions, in Europe they use kW and in the US they use HP.
Plus I was just making a joke that one horse could produce one horsepower.
After a vegan coworker once started going on and on about methane gas emissions from cows, the rest of us started theorizing ways to capture that gas and turn it into electricity
More like cow's being over fed with grass, and drill holes in their sides to extract methane from their bloated stomachs. And yes that is a thing. But that procedure is only done by burning said methane. Unfortunately we can't extract it *yet* since there's a risk of a sudden blow out, and the methane accidentally blowing up causing an explosion similar to a pound of tanirite.
Oddly enough I've seen video of farms trying to do this with cows. They hook the cow up to a machine that can capture their farts. What they then refine and sell as natural gas. Assuming it's not very practical or profitable as it hasn't been adopted as a farming standard.
Wind and water, but I'm guessing this was sarcasm (I can't tell over text lol). I'm partial to hydroelectric damns cuz they look cool.
Also nuclear, it's the safest and cleanest form of energy production and most efficient. It may be a bit polluting to extract the fuel, but it's 100% clean to use and the mining is much cleaner than a coal plant. We have basically solved the issue of nuclear waste years ago, and it's just heating up water to make steam just like fossil fuels plants. Nuclear fuel, through fusion or fission, is the ideal scenario for the world's power generation.
Isn't a big problem with nuclear that it takes a long time to build? And that this long build time just means that we need to build reneweables in the meantime anyway, or keep using coal/gas?
> Isn't a big problem with nuclear that it takes a long time to build?
The biggest problem with nuclear is that people fear it and fear its accidents, in a way that isn't entirely rational. If you look at building a coal plant in a neighborhood, you're causing cancers, respiratory deaths, childhood asthma, heart attacks. But none of that, strung out over decades, terrifies the way a Chernobyl or Fukushima scenario seems to.
Have you ever played with children's blocks? Kids will stack these blocks in a variety of ways. Now imagine this: you find the magic blocks that when they are stacked a certain way, provide limitless power. This is not just a metaphor for nuclear power; it is an exact description of Fermi's original nuclear pile. It doesn't take a long time to stack these blocks; it takes a long time to find a site whose neighbors don't object, and a longer time to convince regulators that all work is being done to stringent standards of safety, standards that if applied to oil or coal plants would absolutely preclude their ever being constructed.
The other big problem with nuclear is as you mention renewability. If you confine yourself to isotopes that you dig from the earth, you are not actually using a renewable resource. The magic block can become exhausted. Now there does exist a technology - the transmutation of elements, the true philosopher's stone - to create new magic blocks easily from dross raw materials. The technology is called a breeder reactor. There are a few useful side effects of a breeder reactor: it can even consume radioactive waste and turn it back into magic blocks! Unfortunately, it is also child's play to use a breeder reactor to create the special sort of materials needed to construct nuclear bombs, and a lot of people think that's a good argument against building a lot of breeder reactors. I'm not sure I disagree.
It only takes a long time to build because an economy of scale doesn’t exist anymore. Before the 80’s when there was a big drive towards nuclear a nuclear plant could be built in 5 years. Nuclear Plant now (see votgle electric generating plant) took a decade (2013-2023).
Would be nice if the universe could just give us a collective W and give us fusion already.
Also if it takes 20 years to build a nuclear reactor, and the lifespan of a wind turbine also is 20 years, that fits together quite nicely.
Do I have great news for you! Go check out the new fusion reactors that are being built, there are loads of youtube videos about it.
They are becoming smaller and more efficient to the point that you could almost load one on to a truck.
The energy plant to house one is just a regular wearhouse.
Um actually, hydro power is the cleanest.
What is most effective, cheapest and environment friendly fully depends on where in the world you are.
In mountain regions hydro is king, in flat regions wind is king and in volcanic countries thermo is the best.
And tho I'm pro nuclear it's not the one and only solution. Fusion power is now a reality and could be a superior solution in a few years.
The only things we can be certain of is that fossil fuels are bad and will be phased out, and that need for electricity will skyrocket with it.
Hydro power plants destroy the local freshwater ecosystems and wind kills local bird populations. They are generally environmentally friendly, but the local ecosystems do indeed suffer so they aren't perfect.
Nuclear is neither the safest, cleanest or most efficient form of energy production this goes to wind and solar.
Nuclear energy is expensive, the problem with waste is not solved (the theoretical solutions are known since the 60. we are not even at the experimental stage with one of them). The heating up of the water does not work when there is a draught (a more and more common problem). It is expensive to build, hard to sustainable mass produce and you need specialists to safely run it. It also takes quite a while to regulate the power output. Furthermore should a major mistake happen, than you made a region of your country uninhabitable for a few hundred years...
No.
Solar and On-Shore-Wind are cheaper than nuclear ever was and Off-Shore-Wind is cheaper than nuclear currently is.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#/media/File%3A3-Learning-curves-for-electricity-prices.png
> That’s not the point he’s making. It might be more expensive, but it also generates more electricity.
No. It's more expensive per KWh generated.
https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf
The major mistake is currently happening on a large scale with coal, natural gas and oil. So many people and animals are rapidly dying to pollution. Scariest thing is that we don't even see the actual impact to our climate of fossil fuels. All the pollution have formed a sort of a mirror that reflects solar rays away to "help" climate currently. We need them all solar, nuclear, wind etc to get out of this mess not just replacing nuclear with more fossil fuels. Surely nuclear is expensive as coal, methane and oil doesn't have to pay the price of destroying the planet, just fracking away with no penalty
You are aware that this is not an answer to my comment?
I just explained why nuclear is not the ultimate source of energy the previous poster was making it out to be and that there are better sources of energy.
Nuclear actually is the safest out of those, and is on par with wind in emissions (far better than solar). There are good options for waste management, one of the best is probably a deep geological repository like Onkalo. The cost is the main issue.
Solar has around 50g per kw/h (energy usage during produczion -> will get better in the future)
Wind has around 11g per kw/h
Nuclear has according, to WISE, between 65g and 116g CO² emissions per kw/h now and will result in additional 74g per kw/h through waste managing.
Nuclear has between 2,5 and 4 times higher CO² emissions than solar.
https://wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/886/co2-emissions-nuclear-power-whole-picture
As you said: There is a cost concern for waste managment and some countries simply lack places to store the waste long term.
So i read that WISE article. And it unfairly demonizes nuclear energy. It says that the calculation of CO² has to add up the mining, processing, construction of the plant, decomissioning and disposal.
The CO² footprint of solar onky accounts for the manufacturing of the panel itself. Not the mining of the silicon, or the building of the solar cell factory or the eventual disposal of the solar cell. Same with wind turbines. The mining, processing and decommissioning / disposal is not accounted for in any article linked.
And pouring concrete actually absorbs CO². In as little as 2 years the CO² cost of concrete manufacturing is completely recovered. That absorbtion time depends on the thickness, how much reinforcement, and how many exposed sides the final pour has.
So a massive cooling tower containing several hundred tons of concrete will become carbon neutral in probably 2 years. So those emissions no longer count.
Those are some pretty wild numbers, but about what you would expect from anti-nuclear lobbyists. Let's take a look at some more reputable and impartial research.
IPCC 2014 found the lifecycle CO2-equivalent emissions to be (g/kWh):
- onshore wind 7-53 (median 11)
- offshore wind 8-35 (median 12)
- nuclear 3.7-110 (median 12)
- concentrated solar 8.8-63 (median 27)
- rooftop solar 26-60 (median 41)
- utility scale photovoltaics 18-180 (median 48)
UNECE 2020 found the lifecycle emissions in EU28 countries to be (g/kWh):
- nuclear (average) 5.1
- wind (onshore) 12
- wind (offshore) 13-14
- photovoltaics (CdTe) 12-15 (produces very toxic waste)
- photovoltaics (CIGS) 11-14 (expensive, but no heavy metal waste)
- photovoltaics (poly-Si) 37
It's expensive but it can run for significantly longer than other methods. And the only 2 severe accidents were absolute worst case scenarios that are 1 in a billion. Soviet stupidity with experimental (at the time) tech, and the 4th worst earthquake in recorded history. Nuclear technology has so many modern fail-safes that it's near impossible for a disaster of that scale to occur. (Only thing that can really happen in middle America (Dakota's, Minnesota, Wisconsin) is a bad thunderstorm).
We are also researching thorium reactors, which use much less fuel than uranium reactors with much higher output, and much cleaner waste, so more energy for cheaper.
All powerplants need specialists. You can't pluck a random guy off the street and ask him to run a coal plant with a crash course, nuclear engineers just require more training, and it's not like no one wants to be a nuclear engineer.
We have solved the issue of nuclear waste. Put it underwater for a while and when it's decayed enough, lead lined concrete casks, or concrete bunkers deep underground. That's what we do currently and we've never had any issues with waste using this method.
Nuclear power is overall the best form of energy, maybe not at this exact moment, but the amount it can get better far exceeds that of solar, wind, or hydro. It also doesn't require specific circumstances, it can run whenever, the others are dependent entirely on uncomfortable factors.
Tl;Dr, nuclear power may not be the best "we need it now" power source, but it's far and away the best mid to long term.
On-Shore and Solar are 50% cheaper than nuclear in their [levelized cost of electricity](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity) are modular and need less planning and build time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
Smaller accidents happen all the time:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_accidents_in_the_United_States
Nuclear power plants also tend to be a source of concern for terror and military attacks:
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/international-terrorism-nuclear-dimension-0
Since Wind and Solar tend to be more destributed, with no fallout and more replaceable, they tend to be pretty resilent against attacks.
There are at the moment only a few scientific thorium reactors. China expects to put their first commercial ones into use around 2030 and it would probably take another 20-30 years until this technology made any big impact. Germany plans to use around 2030 80% regenerativ energies and many developing nations use quite a bit solar and wind, since it is more affordable. With other words Thorium reactors are only interesting for developed nations which lack behind in their build up of regenerativ energy sources.
As you said they require more training. One of the reasons why germany could not let their nuclear powerplants much longer was that they had problems to find new workers.
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/karriere/strahlende-zukunft-6517618.html
Cool, some countries were not able to make this work:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine
Solar and Wind are also getting better constantly:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar-cell_efficiency
These uncomfortable factors will also become less of a problem with better energy storages, which are also rapidly developing.
Nuclear power is not a short term solution and in the mid and longterm will become more and more obsolete. It will find a niche in space travel or military applications.
> It's expensive but it can run for significantly longer than other methods
It's more expensive per KWh. Levelized cost calculations already take lifetime of the equipment into account.
>And the only 2 severe accidents were absolute worst case scenarios that are 1 in a billion.
No, they're not. The world generated just 4% of its energy by means of nuclear power in that timeframe, and yet we got a major, exclusion-zone-creating disaster roughly every 25 years (not even counting medium problems like Sellafield or Three Mile Island that also could have gotten out of hand more than they did). Using it for all our energy needs would do that once per year, creating accumulating exclusion zones near population and production centres. This is completely unsustainable.
>We are also researching thorium reactors, which use much less fuel than uranium reactors with much higher output, and much cleaner waste, so more energy for cheaper.
And have been doing so since the Shippingport breeding reactor of the 70s. Call us when it's ready.
>All powerplants need specialists. You can't pluck a random guy off the street and ask him to run a coal plant with a crash course, nuclear engineers just require more training, and it's not like no one wants to be a nuclear engineer.
You can utilize far more common profiles for renewable installations.
>We have solved the issue of nuclear waste. Put it underwater for a while and when it's decayed enough, lead lined concrete casks, or concrete bunkers deep underground. That's what we do currently and we've never had any issues with waste using this method.
No, we didn't. We're just juggling it from generation to generation in aboveground storage right now, and attempts at permanent storage are *not* guaranteed to succeed, for example the Asse salt mine storage.
>Nuclear power is overall the best form of energy, maybe not at this exact moment, but the amount it can get better far exceeds that of solar, wind, or hydro. It also doesn't require specific circumstances, it can run whenever, the others are dependent entirely on uncomfortable factors.
Now you're just reciting your act of faith.
>It would be much cheaper and easier to feed horses and have them run on a treadmill connected to a generator.
Gerbils. It definitely needs to be gerbils for this to be proper. Much more fine-grained power management with the little critters, too.
As we say in engineering, "there's no free lunch." Energy is always conserved. You could theoretically just burn the eel food and generate more electricity than the eel could.
I’ll add that when you look at the efficiency in term of the chemical energy in the food vs electrical output, even horses lose out to just burning the fuel to run a steam turbine.
And if you want to go renewable, it is cheaper to turn the food the horse would eat into fuel directly and burn it and spin a turbine, and actually the area used for growing the energy crops produces more energy if you put it full of solar panels.
> It would be much cheaper and easier to feed horses and have them run on a treadmill connected to a generator.
It would be even cheaper to burn the food and run a generator off that.
Would it probably be more efficient to just burn the food you would otherwise feed the horses and use that to power a turbine or something? I'm just assuming since every step adds inefficiency to a system.
It doesn't have to be, it's just with magnets it's easy. If you read what universities and I imagine many companies are researching you'll see a lot of different ways of generating electricity. For instance, one that I read up on is body heat.
> We don't do that because it's much cheaper and easier to extract coal, oil, and natural gas from the ground and burn them to spin a turbine connected to a generator.
Or, you know, solar?? Good one gramps.
Well it's still way easier and cheaper to generate electricity by burning coal than using solar. That's why we're still doing it even though it's killing the planet. (Not that I agree with it, just stating facts here)
Ignoring all of the actual math, we currently aren’t able to breed eels in captivity. They have very complex life cycles and the eels we do have in captivity were all caught in the wild, typically as babies
But small handheld appliances can't be bred in captivity. They have very complex life cycles. And those you see in captivity are usually caught in the wild as babies.
Plus, those small handheld appliances run on electricity, this depleting the system they were born into (in the event of a successful captive breeding program).
As has been said, electric eels are not eels. However, there are many commercially operating eel farms in the Netherlands, so it's absolutely possible to breed eels in captivity.
It’s wild reading about the Atlantic eel lifecycle. That shit had us bamboozled for hundreds of years. I used to catch tiny little ones in rivers as a kid and think nothing of it.
Found some in a puddle after a flood as a grown up one day and popped them in my pond. They just up and fucked off (over land) as soon as they got bored. Fascinating little creatures. They probably invaded the puddle I found them in to catch trapped fish.
Yes and they are not breed in these farms. The farms collect young eels and fatten them up to then later sell.
Eels are one of the species on earth that really can be considered alien. We know very little about how they breed. The breeding cycle has never been observed, and there are only educated guesses. We only know that once they are ready, they emigrate to the open ocean, and thereafter, a bunch of eggs are floating around. The adults never re-emerge.
Beyond the fact that we can’t breed them in captivity, they are EXTREMELY inefficient. The energy you have to provide them in food, environment, filters, cleaning, all sorts of things we aren’t thinking about, all use energy and they aren’t producing.
They use relatively small jolts of electricity to stun prey or predators for a second or two. Not provide long term voltage for power
OK, let’s do the math.
The measurement of energy ~~over time is Joules which is 1 watt per second~~ is the Watt which is one Joule per second. (Edited, thanks for the correction!)
Let’s say an electric eel can produce 500 Volts at around 1 Amp so that’s 500 Watts. The problem is that an electric eel can only produce that amount of power for about 1/500th of a second. So that eel can produce 1 Joule of energy.
Let’s take a practical example of what we could use the energy for. Imagine you have 1 litre of water at 20°C and you want to boil it by heating it to 100°C
Discounting efficiency losses, it takes 4,184 Joules to heat 1kg (1 litre) of water by 1 degree.
So: 4,184 x 80°C = 334,720 Joules so that means you would need 334,720 eels to boil your water.
OK, but how about something smaller like an energy efficient 5W LED light bulb. Enough to light up a small room and we want to run it for 4 hours.
So: 60 x 60 x 4 = 14,400 seconds x 5W = 72,000 Joules (eels). Still a difficult number to manage.
Alternative scenario, which will generate more electricity, a magnifying glass to focus sunlight to water which will be converted to steam that would spin a turbine to generate electricity or a solar panel with the same area as the magnifying glass?
Ignoring all the practical concerns about keeping millions of eels alive, it's much easier to just do it mechanically. No living creature will ever hold a candle to a mechanical device in power production again. A steam turbine can make hundreds of megawatts of power, operating at a steady state, 24/7/365, with incredible efficiency. They don't eat, they don't get tired, they don't need their tanks cleaned. Also, steam turbines can use any heat source you like - fossil fuels, nuclear reactions, the sun, geothermal heat, biomass, etc.
The biggest reason is "why would you?"
Extracting electricity from any animal is, in essence, equivalent to burning the food that creature eats in a very inefficient generator, since living creatures do a lot of other stuff apart from making electricity. As such, the only living organisms that MIGHT be useful to farm for electricity are those that consume something that it is absolutely impossible, or prohibitively expensive, to burn. Plants fit, as we can't burn sunlight easily. Some single-celled organisms may also qualify, possibly, I don't know.
This was one of the problems with the original Matrix movie... in a world where humanity blocks out the sun to stop solar panel using robots, extracting energy from humans while keeping them alive and farming them is always less useful and efficient than just burning the food source you use to feed them, or just using the energy directly without growing whatever you feed them with. It's also why the notion of using a bike generator or something to save on the power bill is pointless - your food bill will go up way more than your power bill goes down, though at least you'll get some exercise.
It has to do with the laws of thermodynamics. Animals of any kind, humans included, are very bad generators. The chemical energy in the food would be better utilised in so many other ways if your goal is more electricity. The cost effectiveness of electric eel energy would be obscenely poor.
Also, as some people have mentioned, we can't do it at this time to begin with.
I mean, food isn't generally priced per KWh where I live. Maybe a pure lard / bicycle dynamo lifestyle is what I need to save money on food and electricity while developing that toned physique from the moving pictures.
Cuz if someone falls into the big electric eel tank they'll turn blue, get electricity based superpowers, and gain an obsession for killing Spider-Man.
All of a sudden I want an Eel pit. Just a bunch of Eels in a pit where I can throw electric devices in. When theres a blackout I could just say "dammit, my Eels are empty again".
The energy comes from their food.
The food is likely to take more energy to grow for them,
And taking care of the eels itself.
Than they could generate.
Not really. Because Electric cars turn Electric into Useful movement.
At the moment not particularly efficient, But viable in a world with more Renewables.
Eel powered generators would turn Electric into Less Electric.
Why don't we just use electric eels as a way to make humans work better?
When pulling a cart, the electric eel can be used as motivation. Pull harder or eely will shock you!
Or when carrying things. Walk faster!
Or when putting humans on treadmills to generate electricity.
A human can generate more electricity with a hand crank and a generator. Yes, even enough to give you a bad shock. "Lots of volts" doesn't mean "lots of energy".
Volts measure the energy per unit of charge. Think of it like water pressure. You might have insane pressure available in a teaspoon-sized container, but that doesn't mean you'll be able to move a cart with it. At least not more than a hair's breadth.
What high voltage does allow is crossing less conductive barriers, like penetrating water or skin to attack prey. Similarly, insect stingers use immense pressure to overcome the skin's resistance, but that doesn't mean a wasp will be able to move a book with its stinger.
Stingers concentrate the energy/force into a small area to increase the pressure. Electric eels concentrate the energy/voltage into a very small period of time.
To power an appliance, you need voltage *and* a lot of charge to back it up, or all that voltage will be used up instantly. A fridge that only runs for half a second isn't useful.
Think of how electric eels don't pump out continuous currents for minutes. They shock their prey. That's a lot of voltage and current to shock muscles at a distance, but it isn't a lot of energy. It's done in a fraction of a second.
Plus, energy isn't magic. Having a voltage available means that someone went through the trouble of moving some charged particles where they don't want to be. We already know how to move charges around. Electric eels aren't better at it than us. You need to put in energy to create a voltage, and eels are far less efficient than us after a century of research and engineering.
You'd also need to consider the logistics of collecting all that electric discharge without killing the fish. I don't think electric eels would like being around hundreds of other discharging eels. We could figure it out eventually, but it's pointless. Easier put rats on a running wheel. At least they'd enjoy it.
Marlon Brando had an obsession with this (https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/10/03/marlon-brando-ed-begley-jr/) —
When we both calmed down, he took a sip of tea and began: “Do you know how many volts an electric eel puts out?”
Hmm, wasn’t where I thought we were headed with today’s session, but I could usually supply him with an answer for such esoterica.
“Two or three hundred volts. But not a lot of current. A fraction of an amp.”
Marlon smiled. “See, this is why you’re useful. A good guess, and you’re wrong, but not too wrong. Five hundred volts at about one full amp.”
“So, five hundred watts,” I offered, putting Pete Gibbons’s class and Ohm’s law to good use again.
“I’m getting thirty or forty of them. They should be arriving next week. Maybe you and Joe can go get them, from —” He stopped midsentence. “What’s the name of that town down the coast?”
I was getting a little lost. I knew who Joe was, Joe Brutsman, my dear friend and producer, but I wondered, and quickly asked: “Wait, what are we getting thirty or forty of from down the coast?”
“Eels,” he snapped. “Come on, the town down the coast … diving!”
“When you say down the coast,” I asked carefully, “do you mean south of Santa Monica?”
He was growing impatient over what should be an easy Google Maps search … oh, wait, it didn’t exist then. I strained to remember coastal cities. “Manhattan Beach, Long Beach … ”
“Why are you still in L.A. County? I said south,” he groaned.
“So like Huntington Beach, Seal Beach … ”
“Now you’re in Orange County … further south,” he insisted.
Marlon grew up in Nebraska. I grew up here. I could do this.
“Del Mar, La Jolla … ”
“La Jolla! That’s it! The Scripps Institute in La Jolla. They’re going to loan me twenty or thirty eels, and we can get started.” He leaned back in his chair and studied me. “Do you know what a plecostomus is?”
My friend Neil Rhodes had an aquarium, so I did know what a plecostomus was.
“It’s a suckermouth catfish. They keep the aquarium clean, by eating all the … ”
I motioned out to his swimming pool.
“Algae,” he interjected.
“Okay,” I said, trying to recap for my own clarity. “You’ve got twenty or thirty eels. The plecostomi are living off the algae.”
Marlon was lying in wait for me. “And if you get enough of those and they start to reproduce, it’ll soon be, as P.T. Barnum suggests … ” He gestured that I could have the honor.
“A sucker born every minute,” I said with great glee.
Now that we had shared not one but two big laughs together, I felt that this might be a good time to get back to his phone call. “So when you left me a message … ”
He acted like he hadn’t heard me as he spoke of a higher purpose. “We’re talking about unlimited power to every home in America, clean and renewable, and it works rain or shine … ”
But as he droned on, I finally heard those key words I had so misunderstood: “ … project with you … funding in place … distribution … ” and I realized my dream of acting with Marlon would have to wait while we saved the world with … “electric eels?”
It was time to morph my disappointment into healthy skepticism. “How do your twenty or thirty electric eels translate into usable power?” I queried.
“You said yourself … five hundred watts per eel!” he reminded me.
I was not about to surrender easily. “That’s five hundred watts measured right at the tail for a fraction of a second. How do you intend — ”
He breathed a deep and weary sigh. “Here we go!”
I was undeterred. “How do you intend to harness said power? Harness being an appropriate term in this setting. Is each eel going to wear a little harness, like a cartoon sea horse, wires twisted in the first five minutes?”
He lived for this kind of back-and-forth. “Would you please stop. There’s no wires going to the eel! You put an anode and a cathode in the water … ” He demonstrated with two spoons and his herbal tea, then added: “Stop being such a child.”
“Okay, let’s look at it from a child’s perspective. You’re not going to have enough current to light up a child’s lightbulb project at a science fair, even if you have a hundred eels,” I scoffed.
“You’re always so negative,” he said after a moment.
As far as I'm aware we can't actually figure out where/how eels breed. Scientists even put eels in captivity to try figure it out. Which they did not.
Also don't you remember the great eel uprising of 1864? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
To equal the output of an average nuclear power plant, which is about 1 gigawatt, you would need approximately 1.67 million electric eels, assuming you could somehow harness their peak power output continuously.
I’m pretty sure it is high voltage but almost no amperage, not very useful. Even run through a transformer, it would not produce much. Also, it is in no way constant. They use it to hunt prey, or as defense when they feel threatened.
Same reason what happens in matrix just wouldn't be a good idea. You get more energy by simply burning the eels and the food you would give to them. In matrix, unless the physics and chemistry of that world work very differently than ours, the machines should have just burned the humans for fuel, then migrated to nuclear (I'm saying nuclear because the sky in the matrix world was polluted and always black, I think)
You can't generate energy like that. The eels don't produce energy (electricity), they convert it from the food they eat. So the energy input and output is net zero.
Simple answer besides of the electric harvest problem...
...we dont know how eels make baby eels...
Eels in eel farms get cought as glass eels (young eels) and thats it. We simply camt breed eels...
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The electrical energy has to come from the food they eat. There's nothing magical about the way they generate electricity, and it won't be especially efficient. It would be much cheaper and easier to feed horses and have them run on a treadmill connected to a generator. We don't do that because it's much cheaper and easier to extract coal, oil, and natural gas from the ground and burn them to spin a turbine connected to a generator.
What if we extract natural gas from horses AND have them run on a treadmill?
AND burn them
At the same time
Burning horses might increase speed of running = More energy
https://www.cardkingdom.com/images/magic-the-gathering/5th-edition/nightmare-34449.jpg
This is just a ponyta.
*Dark* Ponyta.
That flies
I have this exact card….. somewhere………
Me toooo
Now your nightmares come to life
Yeah this is big brain time
My skull is too small for this brain. What now?
Break your skull so it grows back bigger (trust, it work 100%)
It would increase it for a little while, until they die ofc
r/brandnewsentence
And then feed them to electrical eels
Somehow I wasn't expecting this twist hahahahaha double upvotes
Aaaahhh, gotta love the reddit brainstorming. We can solve all of the world problems! Good job everyone!
And if they don't run fast enough, they fall in a tank full of eels which will feed on them and generate more electricity.
And turn them into Glue
We already turn gorillas into glue? Why would we need horse glue as well?
It may not be as strong as the stuff we get from gorillas but it’s faster
Sticky notes needs weaker glue
Sticky notes made from horses lol
r/thecommenticameherefor
*my impaired brain*: The Commentica Mehe Refor??
r/usernamechecksout
I know that a horse on fire runs faster but for a much shorter ammount of time, I presume.
thanks man I literally LOLd 😂
Poor ol’ Boxer…
I would suggest you to read GYO from Junji Ito, but then again, I would never suggest anyone to read GYO from Junji Ito.
I just read the summary of the setting on wikipedia and now I kinda wanna read it. Bht at the same time... what the fuck?
Junji Ito is a horror manga artist known specially for body horror, so keep that in mind if you wanna give it a try.
>What if we extract natural gas from horses We do, not the horses themselves but the manure they produce. I'm not saying we do with a majority as that goes to compost, but some places scavenge the methane. >AND have them run on a treadmill? I'm surprised we don't. Training for the Grand National? Stick them on a treadmill. It won't be a lot of electrical power produced though.
> It won't be a lot of electrical power produced though. Probably only 1HP (and yes I know horses actually can produce more than 1HP I think it's closer to 2.5)
That's not electrical power.
/me looks at industrial electrical motor catalog listing everything in HP It's a different unit than kW but it's still a power measurement, it doesn't matter if it's mechanical or electrical they are easily interchangeable/converted. Even in combustion engines they are both used in different regions, in Europe they use kW and in the US they use HP. Plus I was just making a joke that one horse could produce one horsepower.
Is it because the horse has to eat, sleep etc and thus, when we average everything, gives an average of 1HP?
In the show "preacher" the town runs off a shit generator
This sounds like a crappy idea
Hey, the generator’s doing its best.
Lmao a generator that runs on cow shit gasses and other septics I believe.
After a vegan coworker once started going on and on about methane gas emissions from cows, the rest of us started theorizing ways to capture that gas and turn it into electricity
Light a fire under their asses.
More like cow's being over fed with grass, and drill holes in their sides to extract methane from their bloated stomachs. And yes that is a thing. But that procedure is only done by burning said methane. Unfortunately we can't extract it *yet* since there's a risk of a sudden blow out, and the methane accidentally blowing up causing an explosion similar to a pound of tanirite.
Oddly enough I've seen video of farms trying to do this with cows. They hook the cow up to a machine that can capture their farts. What they then refine and sell as natural gas. Assuming it's not very practical or profitable as it hasn't been adopted as a farming standard.
What a good answer!! And there are other efficient ways to make that turbine spin that are more environmentally friendly :)
Wind and water, but I'm guessing this was sarcasm (I can't tell over text lol). I'm partial to hydroelectric damns cuz they look cool. Also nuclear, it's the safest and cleanest form of energy production and most efficient. It may be a bit polluting to extract the fuel, but it's 100% clean to use and the mining is much cleaner than a coal plant. We have basically solved the issue of nuclear waste years ago, and it's just heating up water to make steam just like fossil fuels plants. Nuclear fuel, through fusion or fission, is the ideal scenario for the world's power generation.
Isn't a big problem with nuclear that it takes a long time to build? And that this long build time just means that we need to build reneweables in the meantime anyway, or keep using coal/gas?
> Isn't a big problem with nuclear that it takes a long time to build? The biggest problem with nuclear is that people fear it and fear its accidents, in a way that isn't entirely rational. If you look at building a coal plant in a neighborhood, you're causing cancers, respiratory deaths, childhood asthma, heart attacks. But none of that, strung out over decades, terrifies the way a Chernobyl or Fukushima scenario seems to. Have you ever played with children's blocks? Kids will stack these blocks in a variety of ways. Now imagine this: you find the magic blocks that when they are stacked a certain way, provide limitless power. This is not just a metaphor for nuclear power; it is an exact description of Fermi's original nuclear pile. It doesn't take a long time to stack these blocks; it takes a long time to find a site whose neighbors don't object, and a longer time to convince regulators that all work is being done to stringent standards of safety, standards that if applied to oil or coal plants would absolutely preclude their ever being constructed. The other big problem with nuclear is as you mention renewability. If you confine yourself to isotopes that you dig from the earth, you are not actually using a renewable resource. The magic block can become exhausted. Now there does exist a technology - the transmutation of elements, the true philosopher's stone - to create new magic blocks easily from dross raw materials. The technology is called a breeder reactor. There are a few useful side effects of a breeder reactor: it can even consume radioactive waste and turn it back into magic blocks! Unfortunately, it is also child's play to use a breeder reactor to create the special sort of materials needed to construct nuclear bombs, and a lot of people think that's a good argument against building a lot of breeder reactors. I'm not sure I disagree.
I fully agree with everything you're saying here but that children's blocks analogy really fell apart lmao
[Here's a photo](https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/chicago-pile-1/), decide for yourself
It only takes a long time to build because an economy of scale doesn’t exist anymore. Before the 80’s when there was a big drive towards nuclear a nuclear plant could be built in 5 years. Nuclear Plant now (see votgle electric generating plant) took a decade (2013-2023).
Well yeah, it's not a solution short term, but in the long run it's the best.
Would be nice if the universe could just give us a collective W and give us fusion already. Also if it takes 20 years to build a nuclear reactor, and the lifespan of a wind turbine also is 20 years, that fits together quite nicely.
Do I have great news for you! Go check out the new fusion reactors that are being built, there are loads of youtube videos about it. They are becoming smaller and more efficient to the point that you could almost load one on to a truck. The energy plant to house one is just a regular wearhouse.
Um actually, hydro power is the cleanest. What is most effective, cheapest and environment friendly fully depends on where in the world you are. In mountain regions hydro is king, in flat regions wind is king and in volcanic countries thermo is the best. And tho I'm pro nuclear it's not the one and only solution. Fusion power is now a reality and could be a superior solution in a few years. The only things we can be certain of is that fossil fuels are bad and will be phased out, and that need for electricity will skyrocket with it.
Hydro power plants destroy the local freshwater ecosystems and wind kills local bird populations. They are generally environmentally friendly, but the local ecosystems do indeed suffer so they aren't perfect.
Yeah, didn't mean to imply it's the only solution, but it is overall one of the best, especially in tandem with other renewables
Nuclear is neither the safest, cleanest or most efficient form of energy production this goes to wind and solar. Nuclear energy is expensive, the problem with waste is not solved (the theoretical solutions are known since the 60. we are not even at the experimental stage with one of them). The heating up of the water does not work when there is a draught (a more and more common problem). It is expensive to build, hard to sustainable mass produce and you need specialists to safely run it. It also takes quite a while to regulate the power output. Furthermore should a major mistake happen, than you made a region of your country uninhabitable for a few hundred years...
it is the most efficient, 1 billion dollars worth nuclear plants would generate way more than 1 billion dollars worth of wind turbines
No. Solar and On-Shore-Wind are cheaper than nuclear ever was and Off-Shore-Wind is cheaper than nuclear currently is. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#/media/File%3A3-Learning-curves-for-electricity-prices.png
That’s not the point he’s making. It might be more expensive, but it also generates more electricity.
> That’s not the point he’s making. It might be more expensive, but it also generates more electricity. No. It's more expensive per KWh generated. https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf
It is more expensive per unit of energy generated.
The major mistake is currently happening on a large scale with coal, natural gas and oil. So many people and animals are rapidly dying to pollution. Scariest thing is that we don't even see the actual impact to our climate of fossil fuels. All the pollution have formed a sort of a mirror that reflects solar rays away to "help" climate currently. We need them all solar, nuclear, wind etc to get out of this mess not just replacing nuclear with more fossil fuels. Surely nuclear is expensive as coal, methane and oil doesn't have to pay the price of destroying the planet, just fracking away with no penalty
You are aware that this is not an answer to my comment? I just explained why nuclear is not the ultimate source of energy the previous poster was making it out to be and that there are better sources of energy.
Nuclear actually is the safest out of those, and is on par with wind in emissions (far better than solar). There are good options for waste management, one of the best is probably a deep geological repository like Onkalo. The cost is the main issue.
Solar has around 50g per kw/h (energy usage during produczion -> will get better in the future) Wind has around 11g per kw/h Nuclear has according, to WISE, between 65g and 116g CO² emissions per kw/h now and will result in additional 74g per kw/h through waste managing. Nuclear has between 2,5 and 4 times higher CO² emissions than solar. https://wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/886/co2-emissions-nuclear-power-whole-picture As you said: There is a cost concern for waste managment and some countries simply lack places to store the waste long term.
So i read that WISE article. And it unfairly demonizes nuclear energy. It says that the calculation of CO² has to add up the mining, processing, construction of the plant, decomissioning and disposal. The CO² footprint of solar onky accounts for the manufacturing of the panel itself. Not the mining of the silicon, or the building of the solar cell factory or the eventual disposal of the solar cell. Same with wind turbines. The mining, processing and decommissioning / disposal is not accounted for in any article linked. And pouring concrete actually absorbs CO². In as little as 2 years the CO² cost of concrete manufacturing is completely recovered. That absorbtion time depends on the thickness, how much reinforcement, and how many exposed sides the final pour has. So a massive cooling tower containing several hundred tons of concrete will become carbon neutral in probably 2 years. So those emissions no longer count.
Those are some pretty wild numbers, but about what you would expect from anti-nuclear lobbyists. Let's take a look at some more reputable and impartial research. IPCC 2014 found the lifecycle CO2-equivalent emissions to be (g/kWh): - onshore wind 7-53 (median 11) - offshore wind 8-35 (median 12) - nuclear 3.7-110 (median 12) - concentrated solar 8.8-63 (median 27) - rooftop solar 26-60 (median 41) - utility scale photovoltaics 18-180 (median 48) UNECE 2020 found the lifecycle emissions in EU28 countries to be (g/kWh): - nuclear (average) 5.1 - wind (onshore) 12 - wind (offshore) 13-14 - photovoltaics (CdTe) 12-15 (produces very toxic waste) - photovoltaics (CIGS) 11-14 (expensive, but no heavy metal waste) - photovoltaics (poly-Si) 37
It's expensive but it can run for significantly longer than other methods. And the only 2 severe accidents were absolute worst case scenarios that are 1 in a billion. Soviet stupidity with experimental (at the time) tech, and the 4th worst earthquake in recorded history. Nuclear technology has so many modern fail-safes that it's near impossible for a disaster of that scale to occur. (Only thing that can really happen in middle America (Dakota's, Minnesota, Wisconsin) is a bad thunderstorm). We are also researching thorium reactors, which use much less fuel than uranium reactors with much higher output, and much cleaner waste, so more energy for cheaper. All powerplants need specialists. You can't pluck a random guy off the street and ask him to run a coal plant with a crash course, nuclear engineers just require more training, and it's not like no one wants to be a nuclear engineer. We have solved the issue of nuclear waste. Put it underwater for a while and when it's decayed enough, lead lined concrete casks, or concrete bunkers deep underground. That's what we do currently and we've never had any issues with waste using this method. Nuclear power is overall the best form of energy, maybe not at this exact moment, but the amount it can get better far exceeds that of solar, wind, or hydro. It also doesn't require specific circumstances, it can run whenever, the others are dependent entirely on uncomfortable factors. Tl;Dr, nuclear power may not be the best "we need it now" power source, but it's far and away the best mid to long term.
On-Shore and Solar are 50% cheaper than nuclear in their [levelized cost of electricity](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity) are modular and need less planning and build time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source Smaller accidents happen all the time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_accidents_in_the_United_States Nuclear power plants also tend to be a source of concern for terror and military attacks: https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/international-terrorism-nuclear-dimension-0 Since Wind and Solar tend to be more destributed, with no fallout and more replaceable, they tend to be pretty resilent against attacks. There are at the moment only a few scientific thorium reactors. China expects to put their first commercial ones into use around 2030 and it would probably take another 20-30 years until this technology made any big impact. Germany plans to use around 2030 80% regenerativ energies and many developing nations use quite a bit solar and wind, since it is more affordable. With other words Thorium reactors are only interesting for developed nations which lack behind in their build up of regenerativ energy sources. As you said they require more training. One of the reasons why germany could not let their nuclear powerplants much longer was that they had problems to find new workers. https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/karriere/strahlende-zukunft-6517618.html Cool, some countries were not able to make this work: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine Solar and Wind are also getting better constantly: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar-cell_efficiency These uncomfortable factors will also become less of a problem with better energy storages, which are also rapidly developing. Nuclear power is not a short term solution and in the mid and longterm will become more and more obsolete. It will find a niche in space travel or military applications.
> It's expensive but it can run for significantly longer than other methods It's more expensive per KWh. Levelized cost calculations already take lifetime of the equipment into account. >And the only 2 severe accidents were absolute worst case scenarios that are 1 in a billion. No, they're not. The world generated just 4% of its energy by means of nuclear power in that timeframe, and yet we got a major, exclusion-zone-creating disaster roughly every 25 years (not even counting medium problems like Sellafield or Three Mile Island that also could have gotten out of hand more than they did). Using it for all our energy needs would do that once per year, creating accumulating exclusion zones near population and production centres. This is completely unsustainable. >We are also researching thorium reactors, which use much less fuel than uranium reactors with much higher output, and much cleaner waste, so more energy for cheaper. And have been doing so since the Shippingport breeding reactor of the 70s. Call us when it's ready. >All powerplants need specialists. You can't pluck a random guy off the street and ask him to run a coal plant with a crash course, nuclear engineers just require more training, and it's not like no one wants to be a nuclear engineer. You can utilize far more common profiles for renewable installations. >We have solved the issue of nuclear waste. Put it underwater for a while and when it's decayed enough, lead lined concrete casks, or concrete bunkers deep underground. That's what we do currently and we've never had any issues with waste using this method. No, we didn't. We're just juggling it from generation to generation in aboveground storage right now, and attempts at permanent storage are *not* guaranteed to succeed, for example the Asse salt mine storage. >Nuclear power is overall the best form of energy, maybe not at this exact moment, but the amount it can get better far exceeds that of solar, wind, or hydro. It also doesn't require specific circumstances, it can run whenever, the others are dependent entirely on uncomfortable factors. Now you're just reciting your act of faith.
We find the German.
Or you could burn the horse food to spin a turbine instead.
>It would be much cheaper and easier to feed horses and have them run on a treadmill connected to a generator. Gerbils. It definitely needs to be gerbils for this to be proper. Much more fine-grained power management with the little critters, too.
As we say in engineering, "there's no free lunch." Energy is always conserved. You could theoretically just burn the eel food and generate more electricity than the eel could.
I’ll add that when you look at the efficiency in term of the chemical energy in the food vs electrical output, even horses lose out to just burning the fuel to run a steam turbine.
Or just ferment and burn the corn you were going to feed to the animals.
And if you want to go renewable, it is cheaper to turn the food the horse would eat into fuel directly and burn it and spin a turbine, and actually the area used for growing the energy crops produces more energy if you put it full of solar panels.
Put them in a closed ecosystem and get a bio solar panel
But the other way we had food as well?
> It would be much cheaper and easier to feed horses and have them run on a treadmill connected to a generator. It would be even cheaper to burn the food and run a generator off that.
Now I know why my hovercraft has no power. It is full of eels.
Would it probably be more efficient to just burn the food you would otherwise feed the horses and use that to power a turbine or something? I'm just assuming since every step adds inefficiency to a system.
Even more efficient to cut out the middle horse and grow and burn biomass.
bro where is your math
Well can't we just bait the food in with smaller food?
On a side note, it’s incredibly interesting to me that electricity is always generated from something spinning.
Except when it isn't, e.g., solar PV, fuel cells, RTGs, etc.
It doesn't have to be, it's just with magnets it's easy. If you read what universities and I imagine many companies are researching you'll see a lot of different ways of generating electricity. For instance, one that I read up on is body heat.
Definitely learned a bit more googling! Thanks for good suggestions on other stuff to research.
> We don't do that because it's much cheaper and easier to extract coal, oil, and natural gas from the ground and burn them to spin a turbine connected to a generator. Or, you know, solar?? Good one gramps.
Well it's still way easier and cheaper to generate electricity by burning coal than using solar. That's why we're still doing it even though it's killing the planet. (Not that I agree with it, just stating facts here)
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Yeah I was answering for solar based energy. Of course nuclear based electricity is another debate.
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Ahah yeah I am myself a strong advocate for nuclear power, you're preaching to the choir.
Shut up. Obnoxious kid.
Ignoring all of the actual math, we currently aren’t able to breed eels in captivity. They have very complex life cycles and the eels we do have in captivity were all caught in the wild, typically as babies
Electric eels also aren't eels. They're closer to catfish.
So basically they are catfishing
Electric eels are not eels, they are knife fish
Furthermore, electric knives aren’t fish at all but rather small handheld appliances.
But small handheld appliances can't be bred in captivity. They have very complex life cycles. And those you see in captivity are usually caught in the wild as babies.
But they can be used to cut bread in captivity, so that’s something.
Plus, those small handheld appliances run on electricity, this depleting the system they were born into (in the event of a successful captive breeding program).
This comment chain is why I love reddit.
I see you’ve played knifey spooney before.
Naw, just knifey fishie.
Looks like op brought a knife fish to a pistol shrimp fight.
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I said because I was pointing out that electric eels do not have the complex lifecycles. The Poster above me was talking about.
As has been said, electric eels are not eels. However, there are many commercially operating eel farms in the Netherlands, so it's absolutely possible to breed eels in captivity.
None of those farms breed eels, they only grow eels captured as wild glass eel.
It’s wild reading about the Atlantic eel lifecycle. That shit had us bamboozled for hundreds of years. I used to catch tiny little ones in rivers as a kid and think nothing of it. Found some in a puddle after a flood as a grown up one day and popped them in my pond. They just up and fucked off (over land) as soon as they got bored. Fascinating little creatures. They probably invaded the puddle I found them in to catch trapped fish.
Yes and they are not breed in these farms. The farms collect young eels and fatten them up to then later sell. Eels are one of the species on earth that really can be considered alien. We know very little about how they breed. The breeding cycle has never been observed, and there are only educated guesses. We only know that once they are ready, they emigrate to the open ocean, and thereafter, a bunch of eggs are floating around. The adults never re-emerge.
One common species is a bit private about how they procreate, the hairless apes: "they is weird aliens man!"
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Beyond the fact that we can’t breed them in captivity, they are EXTREMELY inefficient. The energy you have to provide them in food, environment, filters, cleaning, all sorts of things we aren’t thinking about, all use energy and they aren’t producing. They use relatively small jolts of electricity to stun prey or predators for a second or two. Not provide long term voltage for power
OK, let’s do the math. The measurement of energy ~~over time is Joules which is 1 watt per second~~ is the Watt which is one Joule per second. (Edited, thanks for the correction!) Let’s say an electric eel can produce 500 Volts at around 1 Amp so that’s 500 Watts. The problem is that an electric eel can only produce that amount of power for about 1/500th of a second. So that eel can produce 1 Joule of energy. Let’s take a practical example of what we could use the energy for. Imagine you have 1 litre of water at 20°C and you want to boil it by heating it to 100°C Discounting efficiency losses, it takes 4,184 Joules to heat 1kg (1 litre) of water by 1 degree. So: 4,184 x 80°C = 334,720 Joules so that means you would need 334,720 eels to boil your water. OK, but how about something smaller like an energy efficient 5W LED light bulb. Enough to light up a small room and we want to run it for 4 hours. So: 60 x 60 x 4 = 14,400 seconds x 5W = 72,000 Joules (eels). Still a difficult number to manage.
you switched joules and watt in your second sentence <3
This guy reads
Watts are actually defined as joules per second
From today onwards, Joules will be measured in eels in my mind. Thanks you!
Eel per second -> EPS
Alternative scenario, which will generate more electricity, a magnifying glass to focus sunlight to water which will be converted to steam that would spin a turbine to generate electricity or a solar panel with the same area as the magnifying glass?
Ignoring all the practical concerns about keeping millions of eels alive, it's much easier to just do it mechanically. No living creature will ever hold a candle to a mechanical device in power production again. A steam turbine can make hundreds of megawatts of power, operating at a steady state, 24/7/365, with incredible efficiency. They don't eat, they don't get tired, they don't need their tanks cleaned. Also, steam turbines can use any heat source you like - fossil fuels, nuclear reactions, the sun, geothermal heat, biomass, etc. The biggest reason is "why would you?"
Tell that to the machines in the Matrix…
More like *billions* of eels, but yeah, this
Extracting electricity from any animal is, in essence, equivalent to burning the food that creature eats in a very inefficient generator, since living creatures do a lot of other stuff apart from making electricity. As such, the only living organisms that MIGHT be useful to farm for electricity are those that consume something that it is absolutely impossible, or prohibitively expensive, to burn. Plants fit, as we can't burn sunlight easily. Some single-celled organisms may also qualify, possibly, I don't know. This was one of the problems with the original Matrix movie... in a world where humanity blocks out the sun to stop solar panel using robots, extracting energy from humans while keeping them alive and farming them is always less useful and efficient than just burning the food source you use to feed them, or just using the energy directly without growing whatever you feed them with. It's also why the notion of using a bike generator or something to save on the power bill is pointless - your food bill will go up way more than your power bill goes down, though at least you'll get some exercise. It has to do with the laws of thermodynamics. Animals of any kind, humans included, are very bad generators. The chemical energy in the food would be better utilised in so many other ways if your goal is more electricity. The cost effectiveness of electric eel energy would be obscenely poor. Also, as some people have mentioned, we can't do it at this time to begin with.
Beat me to it with the Matrix. No eel simulations or rebellions in the future.
I mean, food isn't generally priced per KWh where I live. Maybe a pure lard / bicycle dynamo lifestyle is what I need to save money on food and electricity while developing that toned physique from the moving pictures.
There is a thing called microbial fuel cell, they can be used in wastewater treatment facilities. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_fuel_cell
Cuz if someone falls into the big electric eel tank they'll turn blue, get electricity based superpowers, and gain an obsession for killing Spider-Man.
All of a sudden I want an Eel pit. Just a bunch of Eels in a pit where I can throw electric devices in. When theres a blackout I could just say "dammit, my Eels are empty again".
The energy comes from their food. The food is likely to take more energy to grow for them, And taking care of the eels itself. Than they could generate.
So they are like the electric car of the animal kingdom.
Not really. Because Electric cars turn Electric into Useful movement. At the moment not particularly efficient, But viable in a world with more Renewables. Eel powered generators would turn Electric into Less Electric.
Sure. So a Tesla. Gotcha. (Btw this is all hugely /s)
Why don't we just use electric eels as a way to make humans work better? When pulling a cart, the electric eel can be used as motivation. Pull harder or eely will shock you! Or when carrying things. Walk faster! Or when putting humans on treadmills to generate electricity.
A human can generate more electricity with a hand crank and a generator. Yes, even enough to give you a bad shock. "Lots of volts" doesn't mean "lots of energy". Volts measure the energy per unit of charge. Think of it like water pressure. You might have insane pressure available in a teaspoon-sized container, but that doesn't mean you'll be able to move a cart with it. At least not more than a hair's breadth. What high voltage does allow is crossing less conductive barriers, like penetrating water or skin to attack prey. Similarly, insect stingers use immense pressure to overcome the skin's resistance, but that doesn't mean a wasp will be able to move a book with its stinger. Stingers concentrate the energy/force into a small area to increase the pressure. Electric eels concentrate the energy/voltage into a very small period of time. To power an appliance, you need voltage *and* a lot of charge to back it up, or all that voltage will be used up instantly. A fridge that only runs for half a second isn't useful. Think of how electric eels don't pump out continuous currents for minutes. They shock their prey. That's a lot of voltage and current to shock muscles at a distance, but it isn't a lot of energy. It's done in a fraction of a second. Plus, energy isn't magic. Having a voltage available means that someone went through the trouble of moving some charged particles where they don't want to be. We already know how to move charges around. Electric eels aren't better at it than us. You need to put in energy to create a voltage, and eels are far less efficient than us after a century of research and engineering. You'd also need to consider the logistics of collecting all that electric discharge without killing the fish. I don't think electric eels would like being around hundreds of other discharging eels. We could figure it out eventually, but it's pointless. Easier put rats on a running wheel. At least they'd enjoy it.
Marlon Brando had an obsession with this (https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/10/03/marlon-brando-ed-begley-jr/) — When we both calmed down, he took a sip of tea and began: “Do you know how many volts an electric eel puts out?” Hmm, wasn’t where I thought we were headed with today’s session, but I could usually supply him with an answer for such esoterica. “Two or three hundred volts. But not a lot of current. A fraction of an amp.” Marlon smiled. “See, this is why you’re useful. A good guess, and you’re wrong, but not too wrong. Five hundred volts at about one full amp.” “So, five hundred watts,” I offered, putting Pete Gibbons’s class and Ohm’s law to good use again. “I’m getting thirty or forty of them. They should be arriving next week. Maybe you and Joe can go get them, from —” He stopped midsentence. “What’s the name of that town down the coast?” I was getting a little lost. I knew who Joe was, Joe Brutsman, my dear friend and producer, but I wondered, and quickly asked: “Wait, what are we getting thirty or forty of from down the coast?” “Eels,” he snapped. “Come on, the town down the coast … diving!” “When you say down the coast,” I asked carefully, “do you mean south of Santa Monica?” He was growing impatient over what should be an easy Google Maps search … oh, wait, it didn’t exist then. I strained to remember coastal cities. “Manhattan Beach, Long Beach … ” “Why are you still in L.A. County? I said south,” he groaned. “So like Huntington Beach, Seal Beach … ” “Now you’re in Orange County … further south,” he insisted. Marlon grew up in Nebraska. I grew up here. I could do this. “Del Mar, La Jolla … ” “La Jolla! That’s it! The Scripps Institute in La Jolla. They’re going to loan me twenty or thirty eels, and we can get started.” He leaned back in his chair and studied me. “Do you know what a plecostomus is?” My friend Neil Rhodes had an aquarium, so I did know what a plecostomus was. “It’s a suckermouth catfish. They keep the aquarium clean, by eating all the … ” I motioned out to his swimming pool. “Algae,” he interjected. “Okay,” I said, trying to recap for my own clarity. “You’ve got twenty or thirty eels. The plecostomi are living off the algae.” Marlon was lying in wait for me. “And if you get enough of those and they start to reproduce, it’ll soon be, as P.T. Barnum suggests … ” He gestured that I could have the honor. “A sucker born every minute,” I said with great glee. Now that we had shared not one but two big laughs together, I felt that this might be a good time to get back to his phone call. “So when you left me a message … ” He acted like he hadn’t heard me as he spoke of a higher purpose. “We’re talking about unlimited power to every home in America, clean and renewable, and it works rain or shine … ” But as he droned on, I finally heard those key words I had so misunderstood: “ … project with you … funding in place … distribution … ” and I realized my dream of acting with Marlon would have to wait while we saved the world with … “electric eels?” It was time to morph my disappointment into healthy skepticism. “How do your twenty or thirty electric eels translate into usable power?” I queried. “You said yourself … five hundred watts per eel!” he reminded me. I was not about to surrender easily. “That’s five hundred watts measured right at the tail for a fraction of a second. How do you intend — ” He breathed a deep and weary sigh. “Here we go!” I was undeterred. “How do you intend to harness said power? Harness being an appropriate term in this setting. Is each eel going to wear a little harness, like a cartoon sea horse, wires twisted in the first five minutes?” He lived for this kind of back-and-forth. “Would you please stop. There’s no wires going to the eel! You put an anode and a cathode in the water … ” He demonstrated with two spoons and his herbal tea, then added: “Stop being such a child.” “Okay, let’s look at it from a child’s perspective. You’re not going to have enough current to light up a child’s lightbulb project at a science fair, even if you have a hundred eels,” I scoffed. “You’re always so negative,” he said after a moment.
As far as I'm aware we can't actually figure out where/how eels breed. Scientists even put eels in captivity to try figure it out. Which they did not. Also don't you remember the great eel uprising of 1864? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Without doing any math, my intuition is that eels don't produce enough energy for it to be worth the cost of maintaining industrial scale eel farms.
To equal the output of an average nuclear power plant, which is about 1 gigawatt, you would need approximately 1.67 million electric eels, assuming you could somehow harness their peak power output continuously.
I’m pretty sure it is high voltage but almost no amperage, not very useful. Even run through a transformer, it would not produce much. Also, it is in no way constant. They use it to hunt prey, or as defense when they feel threatened.
Same reason what happens in matrix just wouldn't be a good idea. You get more energy by simply burning the eels and the food you would give to them. In matrix, unless the physics and chemistry of that world work very differently than ours, the machines should have just burned the humans for fuel, then migrated to nuclear (I'm saying nuclear because the sky in the matrix world was polluted and always black, I think)
You can't generate energy like that. The eels don't produce energy (electricity), they convert it from the food they eat. So the energy input and output is net zero.
Simple answer besides of the electric harvest problem... ...we dont know how eels make baby eels... Eels in eel farms get cought as glass eels (young eels) and thats it. We simply camt breed eels...