211–220 of 616 posts
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Like anything else that the world procures cheaply from China btw.
At this point this is a cliche. There's tons of countries with much cheaper labor. The reasons we build in china are not related to cheap labor, this hasn't been the case from quite some time.
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Can confirm. I live in a US city and the only 9 involved is maybe the very first number. I've lived here just over a year and we've had 1 full day without power and probably 8 to 10 short outages between a few seconds and several 10s of minutes. I'm adding batteries and solar permitting be damned.
Wild! I’ve lived in Chicago and San Francisco and have never lost power for more than an hour. And can’t remember the last time it went out at all, maybe 2 years ago? What city do you live in?
The cause around here is usually storm + trees + above ground power lines, plus a low enough population density that you're not top priority for the utility company.
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> I think it's a bit different nice to discuss the degrees of slavery, little slavery is cool, little more perhaps not as much…
Talking about degrees of slavery is decidedly not cool. If you have documentation of iPhone supply chain using forced labor like I linked to, please do share rather than trying to be morally ambiguous.
The grid is HUGELY expensive, an absolutely massive cost for our electricity. And it would still be expensive in a well-regulated environment where you can quickly and easily get permission to build, without, say, voter ballot propositions illegally blocking a transmission line for years [1]. Here in the US we have a very very poorly regulated environment for adding to our grid, it moves slower than molasses and ther…
Permitting hassle? What do you need permits for?
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Wild! I’ve lived in Chicago and San Francisco and have never lost power for more than an hour. And can’t remember the last time it went out at all, maybe 2 years ago? What city do you live in?
I'm (not GP) in the Chicago burbs and expect to lose power 1-3 times a year. Usually it's for less than twelve hours but last year it was out for three days straight. Most recent outage was ~10 minutes long a couple weeks ago - I still haven't set the oven clock. The cause around here is usually storm + trees + above ground power lines, plus a low enough population density that you're not top priority for the utility…
I was surprised that the original comment said they were in a city
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> Decentralized solar plus batteries is already cheaper than electricity + transmission for me at my home in the US. The only thing stopping me is the permitting hassle or the contractor hassle. Does decentralized solar plus batteries give you same amount of reliability? How many days without sunny weather can you survive without having to change your energy use habits? Each 9 of reliability for infrastructure is EXT…
PVWatts will help you figure this out: https://pvwatts.nrel.gov According to PVWatts, a 10kW solar system would get me very close to my average usage in December. I'd be way over in the summer, could probably get away with a 4kW system and dial back use during an outage. I can lease two Powerwall 3 batteries from my utility company for $55/mo. Or look at: https://www.franklinwh.com/products/apower2-home-battery-bac..…
The trouble with relying on the weather for your electricity is that it is entirely possible that you will go five days straight with cloud cover, limited to no solar generation and then be freezing. This is the problem that the electricity grid solves with varied sources of generation.
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Like anything else that the world procures cheaply from China btw.
At this point this is a cliche. There's tons of countries with much cheaper labor. The reasons we build in china are not related to cheap labor, this hasn't been the case from quite some time.
I recal, the 1980s when Japanese manufacturing was dogy as. By 2000 it was the best
The same thing is happening in China
They are very good at everything they do, and getting better. Good.
Wondering if any Aussies here know this. I’ve heard that if you have a solar system and a battery system connected to the grid, if the grid goes out for whatever reason, your battery gets cut off as well. Meaning that it’s essentially useless as power backup. Is this true? Can you really go fully off-grid in Australia? I’ve heard this from rural people in Victoria, where they do experience blackouts and where an actu…
The reality is that the vast majority of home inverters (in an EV, battery or solar PV) is nowhere near powerful enough to energise even a single distribution transformer.
This is yet another example of electricity codes being unrealistically restrictive.
Generally, there's nothing stopping you from disconnecting your home from the grid during a power outage and running your own devices off a battery. Going fully off-grid depends on your local laws.
Who else could?