Posted on 06/18/2014 9:44:21 AM PDT by shove_it
Utilization of natural gas as a motor fuel has been steadily increasing since new domestic production of this natural resource began in the mid-2000s. It has provided businesses with a cheaper and cleaner way to operate their vehicle fleets. Additionally, elected policymakers have supported adoption of natural gas motor fuel as a strategy to achieve energy independence.
Unfortunately, just as natural gas is starting to penetrate the commuter vehicle market, regulators are making a hard push to force consumers to purchase natural gas motor fuel in kilograms. The National Conference of Weights and Measures (NCWM), which is comprised of state weights and measures officials, is attempting to pass this new regulation at their annual meeting in mid-July.
Consumers, elected officials, industry stakeholders and the market place have built a consensus around gallon equivalents as the method of sale. Click on your state below to send an email to your governor and state weights and measures official to let them know you support gallon equivalents (live links at the article).
They’ll change the monetary system and measuring system to avoid letting people catch onto price hikes.
Seems reasonable, but I’m always nervous when T. Boone is lobbying.....
Exactly! I believe they sell gas by the liter in Europe.
That way you can raise the price and it still seems low.
$1.50 per liter sounds cheap. Then you realize that’s about $6.00 per gallon.
A better way to sell natural gas would be by the energy content, so much per kilocalorie (a term directly translatable to BTU’s, which nobody understands either). Compressed natural gas does not come in “gallons” or “liters” but for a given quantity of fuel by weight, contains a given number of BTU’s or kilocalories.
And this is what provides the total energy needed to propel a vehicle down the road.
Why should this be a problem? The metric system is used everywhere in the world except the US and few obscure, economically unimportant backwaters. The time to begin most easily is before natural-gas cars are common.
There is nothing sacred about the old customary units. The important thing about a unit-system is, are the units standardized, and do they help with communication. Obviously, the metric system is the best for international communication, and it is the standard worldwide in science.
As far as the difficulty of learning it, anyone who has trouble understanding the metric system might as well give up on education at the start. But just to make things even easier, here is a short tip.
For temperature: don’t go memorizing conversion formulas. Just remember that 0°C is freezing, and 20°C is room temperature. If you wish, you can also add 37°C is normal human body temperature. If you know those three, whenever you hear any weather-temperature in Celsius, simply relate it to those three: 0, 20, 37.
A kilogram is about 2.2 pounds. But it is better to just get a kilogram weight, heft it, and use that as your standard. Nobody sees a kg (or a cu ft) of gas anyway, because it is in a tank or a pipe. The mass of gas (kg) is more important than its volume. You really pay for it by mass, so why state the quantity in cu. ft. (which must be specified at temperature and pressure, which changes the volume of a gas)?
Measuring gas by mass (in kg) would be the way chemists would most often do things.
BTU is not a metric unit, but a clumsy engineer’s archaicism. Nor is a kilocalorie a true metric unit, but a metric-derived unit which has the additional disadvantage that there is nomenclatural confusing over the term.
The metric unit of energy is the Joule. To use the Joule in commerce would be a problem, because all the mechanisms for dispensing the fuel would have to sense the energy content, which surely is impractical. It is better simply to adjust the price according to the energy content of the fuel, just as we have different prices for Regular and High Test gasoline.
”Exactly! I believe they sell gas by the liter in Europe.
That way you can raise the price and it still seems low.
$1.50 per liter sounds cheap. Then you realize that’s about $6.00 per gallon.”
You mean that is enough to fool you? I can tell you that whatever system you use, most people can tell when the price goes up. It takes about a day to get use to fuel prices in liters, even if they are in Euros.
I think your point is reasoned. I realize the vapor vs fluid part of it does present a need to reference it differently.
I believe they are paying between $6.00 to $8.00 per gallon in Europe right now. For all the figuring, something sure isn’t working out very good for them.
There are three countries in the entire world that do not use the metric system - Liberia, Myanmar, and the U.S.
Easy enough to add 100°C is the boiling point of water. Also a quickie conversion is: 28°C = 82°F.
Heck, I nearly doubled my MPG when I switched to kilometers.........
Yep, and there’s more - I was in Canada recently and it was 25 degrees out and I didn’t feel cold! Think of how much energy costs we’d save if we switched to Celsius.
Transportation fuels (Gasoline and Diesel) are measured in gallons. What is the motivation for measuring natgas in units other than gallon equivalents?
Fifteen states already indicated their support for natural gas gallon equivalents:
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Florida
Georgia
Indiana
Massachusetts
Nevada
New Mexico
North Carolina
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
South Dakota
Tennessee
Virginia
The rest of the the states have NOT indicated support for natural gas gallon equivalents. If you oppose regulators forcing the metric system on natural gas motor fuel equivalents, click on your state for a sample letter to your governor requesting his/her support.
Global investors want weights and measures standardized and have been influencing (and even suing) governments for a long time. They pretend to be on the side of consumers. Let them weed out the remaining complications and further become morons.
Thank you Shove-It.
It would seem less confusing to sell natural gas by the same measure. I will admit to not fully understanding how you parcel off a gas by the same metric you do a liquid.
take the entire metric system and shove it up your backside!
Go to hell!
Better yet move your sorry ass to Europe!
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