Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer

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Kriegsspiel
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Re: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer

Post by Kriegsspiel »

I'm leaning more towards Pointedstick's POV on the fully electric house with solar panels, especially in the "prepper" aspect. I don't know if it makes sense everywhere, but in the Southwest, where the sun shines constantly, it just seems like such a good deal. Combine it with a wood burning stove, and that's an incredibly resilient house. Combine the solar/electric house, the woodstove, and a couple acres of woodlot, and you're sitting really good, energy-wise.

Pointedstick wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 11:52 am The final tipping point arrived when I got an EV. Since I had sized the solar array to accommodate an EV in the future, my monthly gasoline costs vanished too, and the electric bill didn't budge. So I've been basically driving for free over the past 3 years. Literally my only operating and maintenance costs have been a tire that needed replacement after I drove over a screw. Also the car's large 66 kWh battery doubles as a stealth non-gas-burning generator so we can ride out power outages without drawing attention to ourselves, which I've done and it's marvelous. I don't identify as such anymore, but this setup is a prepper's dream, really.
An EV that doubles as a battery seems like a good idea. I'm thinking that PHEVs are the best choice right now though. I think when the Leaf came out, the idea was that people don't really drive more than 50 miles a day or thereabouts, so the Leaf's 70 mile range (?) was all they would need. PHEVs take that idea, and then add a regular ICE vehicle's range on top of it. Electric seems better for local (especially city) driving, and ICE for long trips.

Plus, at the macro level, distributing the battery material needed to go 300 miles among 10 PHEVs, where the full battery is utilized every day when the car drives 30 miles round trip to work and back most of the time, instead of one vehicle that rarely utilizes the full capabilities of the battery seems like a better use of resources.
You there, Ephialtes. May you live forever.
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Mark Leavy
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Re: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer

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Pointedstick wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 11:52 am ...
Also the car's large 66 kWh battery doubles as a stealth non-gas-burning generator so we can ride out power outages without drawing attention to ourselves, which I've done and it's marvelous.
...
Pointed, you don't have a battery wall for your excess solar, but instead pump it back into the grid?
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Re: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer

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+1 for a wood stove, for sure. We have one of those too. We got religion during a winter power outage back while we still had a gas furnace and ICE vehicle, and despite the availability of natural gas, the furnace didn't work because its blower and electronics needed electricity. No generator, no batteries, no heat. That was a real eye-opener. And my wife loves the wood stove more than probably any other upgrade we've made to the house, so it has multiple benefits!

A PHEV is probably the most practical type of vehicle today, yeah. Zero-cost electric driving 80-90% of the time, gas engine available for road trips. Not as good as a BEV for being an emergency generator, since its built-in battery is smaller, but regardless, there's a lot to love about a RAV4 or Pacifica PHEV. If I hadn't been ready to make the jump to a full BEV, one of those would have been next in line. No regrets about the Bolt, though. It's fantastic.

Mark, yeah, my solar system is grid-tied, so when the grid is up, I use it as a battery. The EV's own battery is only connected to household loads (via a simple 12v 1kW inverter) during power outages. I looked into a whole-house battery system to ditch the grid, but the economics didn't make sense, especially since I already had a large battery capacity in the car.
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Kriegsspiel
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Re: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer

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Kriegsspiel wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 7:03 pm Plus, at the macro level, distributing the battery material needed to go 300 miles among 10 PHEVs, where the full battery is utilized every day when the car drives 30 miles round trip to work and back most of the time, instead of one vehicle that rarely utilizes the full capabilities of the battery seems like a better use of resources.
Toyota's saying the same thing, both from a lithium supply angle, and from a carbon emissions one:
So Toyota isn’t anti-EV, but it believes in a diversified approach and it’s predicting a global shortage of lithium, which is the most important material used in today’s lithium-ion batteries found in pure EVs, hybrids, and plug-in hybrids.

Gill Pratt and his team concluded that to lower carbon emissions as much as possible, it makes more sense to spread the limited supply of lithium among as many cars as possible, electrifying as many cars as possible.

He hypothesized a fleet of 100 internal combustion engine cars with average emissions of 250 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer traveled. Now, assuming a limited supply of lithium, there’s only enough of it to make 100 kilowatt-hours of batteries. Toyota’s Chief Scientist says that if it were used for a single, big battery, the average emissions of the whole fleet would drop by just 1.5 g/km.

But if the small amount of lithium were spread among smaller, 1.1-kWh batteries, it would be possible to make 90 hybrid cars, which would still leave 10 traditional combustion cars, but the average emissions of the theoretical fleet would drop to a much lower 205 g/km.
. . .
According to Automotive News, Gill Pratt was inspired to dig deeper into the battery question by his own family’s experience with a Tesla Model X, which has over 300 miles of range, but the car is typically driven less than 30 miles a day, which means 90 percent of the battery is “dead weight”. link
You there, Ephialtes. May you live forever.
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Re: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer

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That's marketing talk. :) A company selling PCs with only 2 GB of RAM could try to justify it by promoting the idea that "unused RAM is wasted RAM" but people who understand computers can see through that kind of nonsense.

Toyota wants people to buy PHEVs because the bread and butter of their business consists of vehicles that have both a combustion engine and a battery. Remember when this was revolutionary 25 years ago? But today BEVs are the revolutionary tech and Toyota doesn't want people to demand it and buy it because they just don't have any compelling offerings to sell.

Toyota under-invested in BEV technology following a disastrous bet on hydrogen being the basis for the vehicle of the future, but neither market demand nor a fueling infrastructure for hydrogen vehicles ever emerged, so all that money just went into stranded assets. now they have to invest billions to play catch-up to their rivals during a time when the markets and governments of the world are turning away from the products they already sell. All the legacy automakers are in this boat to a certain extent, but it's worst for Toyota and Honda who got into the game latest. Honda still sells no BEVs, while Toyota only has the BZ4X (the same thing as the Subaru Solterra) which is an expensive and underwhelming vehicle that only came onto the market less than a year ago.
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Re: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer

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Pointedstick wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 7:24 pm That's marketing talk. :)
That marketing talk works for me. A plug in Hybrid with a ~40 mile non combustion range sounds about ideal. It covers all of your daily city driving. Plug into the garage at night. Don't even need a 220v outlet. Regenerative braking for the stop lights.

Whenever you need to go further father, you have good old high energy density hydrocarbons. Nothing beats hydrocarbons for energy density.

Timewise: Recharge at home is overnight in the garage while you sleep. Recharge on the road is a few minutes at the gas station.

Honestly, how much more could you optimize that? I mean, besides a 5 speed manual transmission.
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Re: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer

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I agree, PHEVs are pretty great.

They're not optimized for mechanical reliability with their more complex dual powetrains, though. They're also not optimized for zero tailpipe emissions. They still need oil changes. They still have sludgy automatic transmissions. They still need fuel, which means trips to smelly gas stations. You have to "exercise" the engine every so often to keep it in good condition, which is a thing to remember to do if it's a secondary car--or if the engine isn't being used 95% of the time you drive it.

Not everyone cares about those kinds of things, of course; preferences differ. Which is why PHEVs exist and that's cool too. A world with only PHEVs would be amazing.
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Re: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer

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Pointedstick wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 9:14 pm I agree, PHEVs are pretty great.

They're not optimized for mechanical reliability with their more complex dual powetrains, though. They're also not optimized for zero tailpipe emissions. They still need oil changes. They still have sludgy automatic transmissions. They still need fuel, which means trips to smelly gas stations. You have to "exercise" the engine every so often to keep it in good condition, which is a thing to remember to do if it's a secondary car--or if the engine isn't being used 95% of the time you drive it.

Not everyone cares about those kinds of things, of course; preferences differ. Which is why PHEVs exist and that's cool too. A world with only PHEVs would be amazing.
Pointedstick!

Are you still among us? I'm hoping to possibly make a solar installation decision by the end of next week and I'd love to update you on all my current details.
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer

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Don’t. It’s a sham.
Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. Psalm 146:3
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Re: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer

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I'm still around and still chuckling quietly when people tell me it's a scam, it won't work, it isn't possible.

My house's utility bills have been zero (well, the $5 monthly electric company base charge) for the past 6 years, and I've been driving for free with a solar-charged EV for 5. The net $17,500 my solar array cost would have produced about $58/mo if I had put it in my portfolio, while instead the array has allowed me to avoid over $250/mo in energy costs. Not only have I already "broken even" on my costs, but the array is roughly four times economically punchier than standard conservative investment portfolio assumptions (average monthly income production of principal/300), and still over double the punchiness of the quite-punchy 100% equities portfolio I've been in for 9 years since exiting the PP. I've posted about the economics of it before, and I think it suffices to say that people either get it or they don't. That's fine.

I hope you went through with it, yankees60!
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Re: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer

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Pointedstick wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2025 7:15 pm I'm still around and still chuckling quietly when people tell me it's a scam, it won't work, it isn't possible.

My house's utility bills have been zero (well, the $5 monthly electric company base charge) for the past 6 years, and I've been driving for free with a solar-charged EV for 5. The net $17,500 my solar array cost would have produced about $58/mo if I had put it in my portfolio, while instead the array has allowed me to avoid over $250/mo in energy costs. Not only have I already "broken even" on my costs, but the array is roughly four times economically punchier than standard conservative investment portfolio assumptions (average monthly income production of principal/300), and still over double the punchiness of the quite-punchy 100% equities portfolio I've been in for 9 years since exiting the PP. I've posted about the economics of it before, and I think it suffices to say that people either get it or they don't. That's fine.

I hope you went through with it, yankees60!
I had planned to when I wrote the above but some things brought me to a standstill.

1) Is there going to be an EV in my future? I currently own a 2004 Honda Accord with not even 171,000 miles on it. I only go 4,000 to 5,000 miles a year. It's completely adequate for my needs. I'm someone who will keep using something until it dies or is uneconomical to keep repairing. I bought it to my mechanic last week for an oil change but asked him to also go over the car as if I was bringing it to him as a potential purchase, to find anything that needed repairing.

While the car was on the lift he pointed out to me severe rust in one location. He recommended a welding place to have it repaired. Went there and I have an appointment next month with a bill of $1,000 to repair it. Other than that the car is almost always garaged (protected from Northeast elements) and seems that it can go for another two to five years.

Therefore, if I DID plan to buy an EV when this car finally was out of the picture I'd have to size my system to provide electricity for it. That'd mean for 2 to 5 years I'd be building up excess electricity credits that I'd never be using. The only way to use them up would be to gift them to someone else. Not totally opposed to that but it'd be a cost and not a savings to me.

I'm also thinking that I'd be more suited for a hybrid rather than an EV.

2) But the main thing that put a halt was that I'm dead set against doing a roof installation because it'd require a premature roof replacement, throwing away a good existing roof. That'd be an additional cost for going solar. Also, the roof would be facing east.

Therefore, I decided I'd go with a ground mount. It keeps the roof / solar decision completely independent, and the ground mount would be facing south.

The ground mount quotes were about $5,000 more than the roof mounts for equivalent electricity output.

The issue that arose with the ground mount was that the pipes to support it would obviously have to go into the ground.

In 1984 I had to change from my own septic system to tying into the town sewer.

The piping to go from my house is in the ground in the area where the ground mount would be going. But where?
Definitely did not want those ground mount piping to hit the sewer piping. Plus, where is the septic system located? Heavy equipment needs to come in to put in the pipes for the ground mount support, did not want them to sink into the ground due to the septic system being located in that area.

Went to all town sources and no one had on record where that piping was located. Nor where my septic system was located.

We had some warm days in November so I spent a lot of time over about four days digging holes in the ground in attempt to find the piping to the town sewer in front of my house on the street and to figure out my septic system.

I had several people come by to give me advice. Someone who'd been for decades an assessor in the town next to me. Someone who'd been my town's building inspector for decades. Someone else who been a carpenter and around houses for decades.

All said that they'd never seen anything like my septic system. Looked homemade.

I did discover the piping to the street. That piping will NOT be an issue for the ground mount location.

Never did find out where the leach field is for my septic system. But we could not find anything that would be in the area of the ground mount.


Oh, the other issue was that right now I'm using minimum electricity in many ways.

The level I dehumidify my basement.

How hot I heat my hot water.

How much I use my mini-splits to heat (for first two years did no air conditioning).

The aforementioned EV.


Part of the reason for going solar is to remove the financial factor for me for how I use electricity. Instead, of using the minimum ... I'd use as much as I wanted because I'd no longer be seeing a monthly bill for consumption.

However, it's been difficult to project in total how much all that increased use would be from what I am using today. Obviously, need to make a good estimate / projection of that so as to size a system.

Finally, the whole solar is on hold for a few additional reasons. Almost all the solar installers are not going to deal with a ground mount until late spring, until no possibilities of frozen ground.

But most importantly is that I'm doing a thorough investigation of how to change my current portfolio (unchanged since January 2003 - 22 years ago). That is taking an enormous amount of time and involved far more money and financial consequences than does the solar decision.
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer

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Oh, I didn't realize you had changed your username; I thought you were a different person.

Given that I now know we already had prior discussions about this, I don't think there's any more I can offer. You seem to know all the facts and are deep in analysis paralysis mode, but it also sounds like you're sitting pretty and don't expect to be able to reap another 30 years of returns on anything anyway. Thus, probably any option you choose will work out fine. In such a situation, I'd say trust your gut.
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Re: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer

Post by boglerdude »

Need new roof and maybe solar a couple years later. any tips. 900 sq ft stucco box in socal. half flat roof half slanted
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Re: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer

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Pointedstick wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2025 7:15 pm I'm still around and still chuckling quietly when people tell me it's a scam, it won't work, it isn't possible.

My house's utility bills have been zero (well, the $5 monthly electric company base charge) for the past 6 years, and I've been driving for free with a solar-charged EV for 5. The net $17,500 my solar array cost would have produced about $58/mo if I had put it in my portfolio, while instead the array has allowed me to avoid over $250/mo in energy costs. Not only have I already "broken even" on my costs, but the array is roughly four times economically punchier than standard conservative investment portfolio assumptions (average monthly income production of principal/300), and still over double the punchiness of the quite-punchy 100% equities portfolio I've been in for 9 years since exiting the PP. I've posted about the economics of it before, and I think it suffices to say that people either get it or they don't. That's fine.

I hope you went through with it, yankees60!
For me, the allure of solar is that you turn an inflating expense into a fixed cost.

It’s on my list of desired home improvements, after:

1. Upgrading vehicle to account for growing family.
2. Fixing my rotting deck
3. Replacing my aging oil furnace.
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Re: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer

Post by yankees60 »

Jack Jones wrote: Wed Jan 15, 2025 9:29 am
Pointedstick wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2025 7:15 pm I'm still around and still chuckling quietly when people tell me it's a scam, it won't work, it isn't possible.

My house's utility bills have been zero (well, the $5 monthly electric company base charge) for the past 6 years, and I've been driving for free with a solar-charged EV for 5. The net $17,500 my solar array cost would have produced about $58/mo if I had put it in my portfolio, while instead the array has allowed me to avoid over $250/mo in energy costs. Not only have I already "broken even" on my costs, but the array is roughly four times economically punchier than standard conservative investment portfolio assumptions (average monthly income production of principal/300), and still over double the punchiness of the quite-punchy 100% equities portfolio I've been in for 9 years since exiting the PP. I've posted about the economics of it before, and I think it suffices to say that people either get it or they don't. That's fine.

I hope you went through with it, yankees60!
For me, the allure of solar is that you turn an inflating expense into a fixed cost.

It’s on my list of desired home improvements, after:

1. Upgrading vehicle to account for growing family.
2. Fixing my rotting deck
3. Replacing my aging oil furnace.
Regarding #3.

I was looking at possibly replacing an aging 70+ year old oil tank. Furnace was 24 years old but still working fine through constant upkeep of it, including major repairs.

However, I got super lucky with mini-splits.

In Massachusetts one gets a $10,000 rebate for a whole house system which allows you to not use your oil or gas furnaces (except due to emergency).

However, you get an enhanced rebate of $16,000 if you are of low income.

I applied using a year that was my lowest income year from anything before or since. I'd just started collecting Social Security for only part of the year and not yet into Required Minimum Distributions.

That made me eligible for the $16,000.

Cost for the system (18,000 BTU and two 6,000 BTU, each on own outside unit) was $16,500, which left a net cost of $500 for me.

I went live on December 30, 2022. Shut off the oil furnace that day and it's been off since.
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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