John G, Ron, etc..
I for one like the ideas, even off the wall ones.
However, I would caution that ideas in and of themselves have no to
little value.
Ideas with a practical implementation and proof of concept have great value.
The differencence betwen the two is an invention and a crackpot scheme!
So, any idea involving, say, batteries (the making of), solar cells (the
making of), generation of electricity (windwill, regen, battery-gen,
scooter motors with hub drives) etc. to be real, credible and
implementable shoud have some fundamentals along with it.
These fundamentals involve, at a minimum, a good concept of what it
takes to make one, in time, labour and materials, cost of same,
difficulty of same.
A sketch and or reference to the fundamental physics involved is also
helpful and desirable.
Math, physics calculations etc. are NOT essential, just a definition of
how one might calculate such if one has the skills.
Some examples;
I want to make batteries (compared to a store bought 100$ battery).
(numbers are from my head, and not fact checked).
I will put in lead plate (of 1 square meter surface area, 1 mm thick.)
The lead will have a mass of 25 kg.
I will buy the lead from (mcmaster-carr, msi, misumi, etc. and they
freight and hazmat charges will be say 80$, plus the lead, 125$).
I will put in as "few gallons of acid", say 20 litres.
The acid will come from chemical supply house, and I will do the
required security certificates related to potential explosives precursors.
The acid will cost me 100$ (5$ a litre sounds reasonable).
I will put it in a stone container, say an old stone container
(carfofagus ?) I happen to have lying around.
Thus, from the above, because of the cost of lead, cost of acid, and
lack of suitable free surplus stone carcofagi I can easily conclude that
making batteries is unlikely to be succesful for me, and other people,
compared to buying the same from say Sams club, Walmart, etc.
You CANNOT ignore cost of anything related to building or making
anything, without instantly losing credibility.
A credible build or invention takes them into account, and defines what
and how are your sources for the needed material.
It is extremely easy to use existing resources (wealth) and use it to
generate more wealth.
This is neither a process or invention, it is simply a way of utilising
already existing resources.
An example would be using say 10 tons of gold, that you have, to ballast
your boat, instead of lead.
Thus "saving" the 5000$ in costs of buying the lead.
This is conceptually similar to the definition of "making a battery",
with "some stuff", without specifying what stuff, how much it costs,
where You will get it from, how you will use, process and manage it, and
what you will get out of it.
Details are important, in fact they are crucial.
So is implementation.
In fact, most succesfull companies, ideas and businesses in the world
thrive on world-class implementation rather than a good idea.
Some examples would be VHS, Microsoft, IBM, Sony, Gillette, Kodak,
Hoover to name a few.
Once upon a time an idea existed, and many companies had similar ideas
and processes and products. However, the one to win (sell) was the one
to implement it well, rather than the one with a good idea of indeed the
best idea.
For success in something, you must be able to define who, what, why,
when, where and how much. And how long it takes.
Errors in any part are allowable, as long as they are a fraction rather
than orders or magnitude.
The ballasting boats with "gold I happen to have" is a good example.
Utilising existing resources to leverage technology is a perfectly valid
path.
Just make sure you know what it costs if you don´t have it, as otherwise
the correct, much easier, and much better path is usually sell the extra
resource (like the gold), use some of the money to buy the lead you
need, and keep the rest.
Efficiently leveraging existign resources might be your (or someone you
know, a relative, a friend etc) farm, on which you can build the boat
rent-free.
Or a machine shop you own/work at/is a friends where you can use their
tools/know-how/experience etc. for "free".
Your house roof as a place to put a solar farm is a good example.
You already own it, have access to it, and are unlikely to be using it
for much of anything.
Here you are leveraging an asset you already have, and it is an asset
that most people will have in a similar way.
I am not being negative, just injecting some realism and a path to
commercial success with these ideas.
Best,
hanermo
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