Conservative Politics & Daily Events Discussion

Quote from Edward Neal

Transitioning the country away from internal combustion vehicles over to electric vehicles will greatly increase the electric production requirements of the country and unless they find an economical way to store the electricity produced by solar and wind power this will mandate an increase in the power generated by coal and natural gas to supply the power to charge all of the electric vehicles

Seriously think about this - - a Tesla powerwall II battery that you might install on your home has a power rating of 13.5 kWh. one of these and 22 solar panels worth of roof top solar should be good to power and backup the average home.

So lets compare this to the electrical needs of an electric car - if 13.5 kWh is enough to back up your home in an outage and to also run it all night when the solar is not running what's it take to run a car? - - the standard battery currently in a Tesla model S is 100kWh - almost 7.5 times larger than a Tesla power wall II - - and 100kWh batteries and larger seem to be what the future holds for any kind of decent range - - - - so how does this country charge all of these batteries if the majority of cars become electric? - - clearly if you need 22 panels simply to run your home and keep the 13.5 kWh backup charged how many panels would need to be added if you also need to charge a 100kWh electric car every night?? - - could you even fit this many panels on the average roof and have them getting good / efficient sun exposure?

Roof top solar on most homes would never be able to provide 100% of the homes needs plus 100% of the charging needs for a 100k battery car driven all the time - - now consider the fact than many homes need 2 cars that would need charging, and what of other vehicles? how many kWh would the battery have to be for an 18 wheeler and where you going to get clean electricity to charge that?

Some people seem to think that just because you get an electric vehicle it somehow magically green, but unless all of the power charging these vehicles comes from clean green energy sources its just not true.

Here in Southern California we are being warned that there might need to be rolling blackouts this summer because the grid might not be able to provide the power needed during this summers heat - - - they say that currently sales of electric cars in the state (light vehicles) is 12%

So, the grid is incapable of producing a guaranteed sufficient supply right now today when only 12% of new cars are electric so what's going to happen when that becomes 50% or 100%? and when it starts also including large heavy vehicles - - - - and what are we doing - - we are shutting down the last nuclear plant in the State - - - - - and the environmental freaks are fighting every single new wind and solar project - - - and even if all production were green we have no way to store any of it so that we can run things when the sun goes down or the wind doesn't blow

forgive my rambling, but this idea that we need to make every vehicle electric just baffles me when it seems so very clear that we are doing nothing and in fact are actually going backwards when it comes to providing the infrastructure to be able to charge the electric vehicles we already have with power from clean sources let alone a future of 100% electric vehicles

its all BS

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This calculation only kinda works where you live. Now re-figure in in the PNW where the solar efficiency drops over 50% due to average rain and cloud cover, then in areas where snow covers the panels 1/4 of the year. Right when you need power the most.

I have only mentioned it a couple times but my immediate family has a direct stake in the largest renewable power company in the nation (gas, wind, solar, nuclear, and hydro plants). I have energy production investments in the US, Canada, Spain, and the Caribbean. Without government support only gas, hydro, and nuclear are viable, the rest are decades away from breaking even IF technology advances well beyond what we have now and costs come down. When everything is taken in to account current wind and solar are more harmful to the environment and MUCH less efficient than gas generation, a hundred times less than hydro, and a thousand times less than nuclear. IMO wind will never be viable as a primary power source and you know those turbines lining the hills NW of your beautiful city, I own part of a few of them. And most there are already failing to the point they should just be bulldozed.

Can't really say much more than that on the subject ......

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It was really an interesting read a couple of weeks ago, where the engineer was stating facts.... Like 40% of the power in the US is still generated by coal power plants, which means that 40% of the electric cars run on coal power....

Some things to think about. Information on electric/green vehicles…. We are going to a tiered electrical pricing here in Colorado because there isn't enough electricity during peak times.. Anyways.. To say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid. Batteries, they do not make electricity, they store electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, or diesel-fueled generators. Forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. is from coal-fired plants, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered.

For those of you excited about electric cars and a green revolution, I want you to take a closer look at batteries and also windmills and solar panels. A typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds, about the size of a travel trunk. It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.

To manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth's crust for one battery.

The main problem with solar arrays is the chemicals needed to process silicate into the silicon used in the panels. To make pure enough silicon requires processing it with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride, trichloroethane, and acetone. In addition, they also need gallium, arsenide, copper-indium-gallium- diselenide, and cadmium-telluride, which also are highly toxic. Silicon dust is a hazard to the workers, and the panels cannot be recycled.

Windmills are the ultimate in embedded costs and environmental destruction. Each weighs 1688 tons (the equivalent of 23 houses) and contains 1300 tons of concrete, 295 tons of steel, 48 tons of iron, 24 tons of fiberglass, and the hard to extract rare earths neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium. Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds and will last 15 to 20 years, at which time it must be replaced. We cannot recycle used blades.

There may be a place for these technologies, but you must look beyond the myth of zero emissions. "Going Green" may sound like the Utopian ideal but when you look at the hidden and embedded costs realistically with an open mind, you can see that Going Green is more destructive to the Earth's environment than meets the eye, for sure. I'm not opposed to mining, electric vehicles, wind or solar. But showing the reality of the situation. for reference... https://www.manhattan-institute.org/mines-minerals-and...

The problem is they do not look at all of what is evolved they only look at how they think the green deal is saving the Earth. The green deal people are not telling them what it takes from the Earth for them to go green.

Quote from DJohnson

The problem is they do not look at all of what is evolved they only look at how they think the green deal is saving the Earth. The green deal people are not telling them what it takes from the Earth for them to go green.

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This is what "going green" produces .......

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Going "green" for me when I had the solar installed on our home was 99% about one thing only - - the "green" it would save from coming out of our bank accounts

Any other "green" that comes from the over 5,000 kWh of extra power we feed back into the grid for others to use each year? - - - its nice, but really was not a part of the decision process

Quote from Orangeman

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This is what "going green" produces .......

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GONE Green…… But like I’ve said before double the price of something and you double the sales tax as well do you think the government cares?

now - on the bright side of all of this green technology - its currently 100 degrees outside. our air conditioning has been running since early this morning. at this time, 2:45 pm, for this day starting at midnight last night our house has consumed 20.1 kWh of electricity and since the sun came up our solar system has produced 58.8 kWh of electricity.

Quote from Bill Martin

I have heard it said that our “leaders” planned to have gas prices soar to push people into electric vehicles. I hope that this is just propaganda.

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Joe and Energy Secretary Granholm have come right out and said it in public .........

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse…tions-he-thrilled-bertaut

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Quote from Bill Martin

Quick question - I am not versed in solar panels other than when I did a cost benefit analysis I figured I would be dead before I was in the black (that was 4 years ago). With them already talking about blackouts in your state - how long will solar power your home in the event of a blackout - just curious 😬

Without a battery like the Tesla powerwall solar will not provide any power in a blackout - because the system is tied to the grid it is designed to automatically disconnect and shut down if their is a power outage - this is done to prevent the solar power being fed back into the grid where it could kill anyone trying to work on the lines. The excess power being generated needs a place to go and without a battery the only other option are back in the grid or total shut down.

Now if we added a couple of powerwalls then the system would disconnect from the grid and run off the solar when the sun was out and the excess power would charge the batteries at the same time and then at night the house would run off the batteries. - - if this system were properly sized it should be able to power the home forever just so long as there is sun to keep things charged during the day. With no sun to keep the batteries charged then how long would all depend on what electrical devices we run - - 2 batteries at 13.5 kWh each would probably run us in summer for 1/2 a day, in winter with no need for AC then perhaps a day and 1/2 - on the bright side getting "no sun" is not something that happens here for any length of time

Back when we put our system the batteries were fairly new and the company we were dealing with would not include them unless we paid 100% up front for the batteries. We didn't want to do that so we went without - - in the time since then, we are in year 6 now, we have only had one outage that I can recall that lasted more than a few minutes - - - because of our extreme heat they seem to try to keep us up and running even if they are doing rolling blackouts - - these things inevitably become necessary on the very hottest days and those are the same days where a lack of power here in the desert would probably kill people

I think about how nice batteries would be from time to time, but its a lot of money for something I might use once a year at best so it will probably never happen

As a side note we got a notice from SCE just a few days ago telling us they are going to be doing planned maintenance in our area so our power will be off from 10pm on May 24 until 6:00 am the next morning We will probabally set the AC a few degrees lower than normal to pre cool the house - still not worth the 17K plus installation that 2 powerwalls would cost

Quote from Edward Neal

Without a battery like the Tesla powerwall solar will not provide any power in a blackout - because the system is tied to the grid it is designed to automatically disconnect and shut down if their is a power outage - this is done to prevent the solar power being fed back into the grid where it could kill anyone trying to work on the lines. The excess power being generated needs a place to go and without a battery the only other option are back in the grid or total shut down.

Now if we added a couple of powerwalls then the system would disconnect from the grid and run off the solar when the sun was out and the excess power would charge the batteries at the same time and then at night the house would run off the batteries. - - if this system were properly sized it should be able to power the home forever just so long as there is sun to keep things charged during the day. With no sun to keep the batteries charged then how long would all depend on what electrical devices we run - - 2 batteries at 13.5 kWh each would probably run us in summer for 1/2 a day, in winter with no need for AC then perhaps a day and 1/2 - on the bright side getting "no sun" is not something that happens here for any length of time

Back when we put our system the batteries were fairly new and the company we were dealing with would not include them unless we paid 100% up front for the batteries. We didn't want to do that so we went without - - in the time since then, we are in year 6 now, we have only had one outage that I can recall that lasted more than a few minutes - - - because of our extreme heat they seem to try to keep us up and running even if they are doing rolling blackouts - - these things inevitably become necessary on the very hottest days and those are the same days where a lack of power here in the desert would probably kill people

I think about how nice batteries would be from time to time, but its a lot of money for something I might use once a year at best so it will probably never happen

As a side note we got a notice from SCE just a few days ago telling us they are going to be doing planned maintenance in our area so our power will be off from 10pm on May 24 until 6:00 am the next morning We will probabally set the AC a few degrees lower than normal to pre cool the house - still not worth the 17K plus installation that 2 powerwalls would cost

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Did you opt for the grid tied option because you get money back from your power provider?.... I was going to go the low budget way and just do a Generic that runs off of Natural Gas...

😂. Gas prices are this high

Quote from billythekidd

Did you opt for the grid tied option because you get money back from your power provider?.... I was going to go the low budget way and just do a Generic that runs off of Natural Gas...

grid tied is not really about getting money back - SCE only pays the wholesale rate when they pay for excess power which is like 2 cents per kWh - - they true up and pay this once a year on our systems anniversary - - being grid tied is more about the grid acting as our storage for the extra power we make - everyday during the day our system makes much more than we are using. This extra power is fed into the grid and builds up a credit of however many kWh excess we have put in, then when the solar is not producing we draw this credit back out. in a perfectly designed system what you put in should be as close as possible to what you take back out - - having a oversized system like we do the money they pay us really is not worth the extra power we give them because they are selling it to others at full tiered plan retail rates.

If I were doing our system today we would not go as big, our needs are less now and we could still produce everything we need with a smaller system no need to give them any more than necessary

As a side note I dont think not being grid tied is even an option at least not around here, the only stand alone systems I have heard of ar on things like remote mountain cabins where there is no grid to tie to

Quote from Edward Neal

grid tied is not really about getting money back - SCE only pays the wholesale rate when they pay for excess power which is like 2 cents per kWh - - they true up and pay this once a year on our systems anniversary - - being grid tied is more about the grid acting as our storage for the extra power we make - everyday during the day our system makes much more than we are using. This extra power is fed into the grid and builds up a credit of however many kWh excess we have put in, then when the solar is not producing we draw this credit back out. in a perfectly designed system what you put in should be as close as possible to what you take back out - - having a oversized system like we do the money they pay us really is not worth the extra power we give them because they are selling it to others at full tiered plan retail rates.

If I were doing our system today we would not go as big, our needs are less now and we could still produce everything we need with a smaller system no need to give them any more than necessary

As a side note I dont think not being grid tied is even an option at least not around here, the only stand alone systems I have heard of ar on things like remote mountain cabins where there is no grid to tie to

I guess I was thinking of something like the Sunny Boy inverter.... which during a power outage disconnects you from the grid and allows you to use I believe around 2000kw of power from your solar... I know the completely off grid is crazy expensive...

Quote from billythekidd

Did you opt for the grid tied option because you get money back from your power provider?.... I was going to go the low budget way and just do a Generic that runs off of Natural Gas...

thats the best cost efficient option for emergency backup use

Quote from billythekidd

I guess I was thinking of something like the Sunny Boy inverter.... which during a power outage disconnects you from the grid and allows you to use I believe around 2000kw of power from your solar... I know the completely off grid is crazy expensive...

I installed a grid tie system on my roof in 2010. The “microfit” program just came out in Ontario. It was all about the money I get paid for generating. 80cents /kwh on a 20 year contract. Next program revision they dropped it to 50cents, then 30 cents, then the program was cancelled.

the program we have now is similar to what you have, we call it net metering. what you generate goes against what you use.

Quote from billythekidd

I guess I was thinking of something like the Sunny Boy inverter.... which during a power outage disconnects you from the grid and allows you to use I believe around 2000kw of power from your solar... I know the completely off grid is crazy expensive...

I am not familiar the sunny boy, the only option I have heard of requires the system to have the battery. When the power goes off it disconnects from the grid, the house runs off the battery and the solar panels keep the battery charged and when fully charged the solar is shut off until the battery drops down and can be topped back up again. From what I understand this requires a special inverter that is designed to turn on and off the solar as the battery gets full