321–330 of 355 posts
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I'm not sure government incentives allow the free market to do its work, then. Why would you think it would?
government incentives help to reduce the externalities You seem to think that two companies selling product A will rather sell 50 for $10 per unit profit than 100 for $9 per unit profit because it's easier. I mean, it's a view, sure.
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It grew organically so there was never a huge cost Really, except when we decided to build a building for The power plant because it was getting out of hand. It’s been a few thousand dollars a year in growth as we add batteries and panels. Also a bit of labor for installation of course, but we handle that in house.
How much are you valuing your own time? Theres money cost, then theres time cost and the final one is in more remote communities with cold weather… insurance costs on failure… Also to be clear - good on you for building out rural off grid electrical. Its a fun project and satisfying no doubt (outaide of costa)
I’ve been running a solar microgrid on my coffee farm for the last 7years. We started with a few golf cart batteries and 4 panels, these days we’re powering 4 houses, 7 cabins, water extraction, treatment, and RO processing, campus-wide fiber network and switches, path lighting, security systems, and a small server rack. We’re running 6 inverters on our primary system in a three phase configuration, 35kw of panels an…
> It’s strange to me that people in rural areas pay for electricity. It makes no economic sense, at least here in the Caribbean. This comment was very confusing until I read the second sentence. Electricity prices in the Caribbean are very high, and I can only imagine that rural areas are even worse. Where I’m at in the United States a typical electric rate is around $0.10/kWh. Paying that nominal amount and avoiding…
(The price of electricity is already pre-approved to increase 5% a year, so actually my savings will be more every year than the year before)
Solar can be worth it even when power is cheap.
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> hydroelectric, so already green Not so fast. Zero emissions, yeah. But they have damaged the habitat for some bird species.
Feral cats kill 2 billion birds a year, FYI the green energy kills birds thing is a right wing talking point designed to distract and delay. All human activity kills some nominal number of birds
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That’s silly, why make it political? If anything the political encroachment came from the green crowd first, cafe standards, EV mandates and the like. The best way forward has always been to explore all energy avenues, and that will include fossil fuels as well. At least you’ve included nuclear, but left out fission, strangely, which is the best hope of electric generation replacement we currently have. I’m tired of…
No offence, but everything is political. Much of our lives are controlled by laws. These laws are all politically controlled. To say it's silly to make something political, usually suggests your supported political slant is difficult to justify. Trade offs are only possible when the party in charge is willing to work with EVERYONE, we don't have that now. Thus the criticism.
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No, greed is a necessary component. Because under capitalism both parties don't execute the trade, rationally at least, unless both are greedily better off. Without greed it goes from a positive sum system to a destructive system because you no longer have the parties being better off from the transaction. From a cursory standpoint that might be ok (the economy won't implode if some small fraction does this like a mi…
You're mischaracterising "not wanting to overpay" and "getting something you need in return for what you have in excess" as "greed". It's a pointless conversation if you're willing to do that. You're just changing definitions before arguing them.
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I don’t have much in the way of links, but I can give you an overview. We have a fair bit of vertical scale in the terrain here. We extract our water from a shallow well in a natural crevasse between ridges. It is made of concrete blocks stacked in a circle, filled with gravel and pinned with heavy rebar. The above ground part is finished in a regular fashion, with the blocks filled with concrete and a concrete cap.…
This is cool as hell. Sounds like you keep pretty busy, but if you ever had the inclination to write more about it or post some pictures somewhere, I for one would love to see.
I’ve been running a solar microgrid on my coffee farm for the last 7years. We started with a few golf cart batteries and 4 panels, these days we’re powering 4 houses, 7 cabins, water extraction, treatment, and RO processing, campus-wide fiber network and switches, path lighting, security systems, and a small server rack. We’re running 6 inverters on our primary system in a three phase configuration, 35kw of panels an…
That sounds like a dream gig. Do you find it satisfying running your own utility?