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All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

innerpathing.com

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Re: All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

#41

Post by pryelluw »

skybrian wrote: post #28

> Electric vehicles are mainstream and last longer than their gas engine counterparts, with an estimated lifespan of 200,000 miles. What's this based on? Don't many gas cars last that long? It seems like it depends very much on how well you maintain them.

It also depends on the batteries themselves. An older Nissan leaf? Doubt it. A newer Tesla? I sure hope so.

Im curious as to how car batteries will be repurposed to use for energy storage. Once they degrade to the point of only holding charge for short trips, can they still be used for other scenarios that don’t require as much from them?

Re: All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

#42

Post by ben_w »

skybrian wrote: post #28

> Electric vehicles are mainstream and last longer than their gas engine counterparts, with an estimated lifespan of 200,000 miles. What's this based on? Don't many gas cars last that long? It seems like it depends very much on how well you maintain them.

I'm not sure about averages, but given the second hand pricing I've seen: I thought after 100 or so megameters, even well maintained internal combustion engines needed maintenance of a price comparable to replacement?

Re: All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

#43

Post by warble »

skybrian wrote: post #28

> Electric vehicles are mainstream and last longer than their gas engine counterparts, with an estimated lifespan of 200,000 miles. What's this based on? Don't many gas cars last that long? It seems like it depends very much on how well you maintain them.

300k on my Toyota right now. Most modern ICE engines should last 200k with no problems. EVs (other than the battery) should last a million miles. Even the batteries are turning out to last longer than everyone expected, ignoring some notable notable failures.

Re: All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

#44

Post by itishappy »

sdk77 wrote: post #29
itishappy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... in summer I might need to pay to feed in the surplus. You're allowed to just disconnect solar panels. It's free and does not damage them.

Sure. Of course. Not being allowed to disconnect them would be ridiculous. But do you want to keep an eye on the market every day, and run to the breaker to turn on an off your inverter? No. So you need a solution for that. Then a battery is much more interesting.

Completely agree. I mainly mention it to dispel any notions that solar panels can expose you to financial risk due to negative energy prices. This is trivial to address. Negative prices should only be a concern for plants that can not be quickly or easily shut down, like thermal plants (coal/gas/nuclear).

Re: All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

#45

Post by dgacmu »

ramesh31 wrote: post #11
EQYV wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, why is this your reaction? Why are people on this forum so unwilling to be happy for others? I have noticed that this attitude is extremely prominent in tech. Everything is either perfect (according to the person making the judgement) or it’s utterly worthy of ridicule. I am growing very, very tired of seeing this throughout tech.

>Why are people on this forum so unwilling to be happy for others? It's a particularly offensive part of white culture that fetishizes a "return to the land" while billions around the world are trapped miserably eeking out that existence with literally zero opportunity to ever have anything else. The only reason you feel "happy" for them is because you know its a cosplay charade they could walk away from at any time.…

It would be a mistake to think their experience is anything close to that of people in poverty, regardless of their ability to walk away from it. Poverty doesn't involve affording the capital outlay for $16k of solar/battery/hardware to give you 24x7 heat, heated water, electricity, and _an electric car_.

They're trying to have a developed world quality of life in a low-resource/low-cost way. In some ways, beyond average developed world quality of life: the place they're living is stinkin' gorgeous.

I don't know if it's generally practical for most people or even as energy efficient as living in a modest apartment in a large city (the transportation issues around food, medicine, and necessities factor in), but it's not an uninteresting thing to explore.

Re: All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

#46

Post by Larrikin »

sdk77 wrote: post #29
itishappy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... in summer I might need to pay to feed in the surplus. You're allowed to just disconnect solar panels. It's free and does not damage them.

Sure. Of course. Not being allowed to disconnect them would be ridiculous. But do you want to keep an eye on the market every day, and run to the breaker to turn on an off your inverter? No. So you need a solution for that. Then a battery is much more interesting.

Could you just use Home Assistant to do this?

Re: All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

#48

Post by unethical_ban »

saaaaaam wrote: post #16
EQYV wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, why is this your reaction? Why are people on this forum so unwilling to be happy for others? I have noticed that this attitude is extremely prominent in tech. Everything is either perfect (according to the person making the judgement) or it’s utterly worthy of ridicule. I am growing very, very tired of seeing this throughout tech.

I suspect that the comment was provoked by the term “solarpunk”. For many people in non first world countries this sort of existence is standard - not something to be blogged about with artfully composed photos carefully edited and posted to the internet. So I guess the comment was provoked by something like that. It was certainly one of my reactions reading the piece. I also thought “oh that’s cool, I wonder how the…

/dismissive handwave

I think you and the other person are reading far too deep into one person's contentment with a humble living space. It's clear they are safe and comfortable; that doesn't translate in any way to suggesting other places where this living style (sans electricity or safety) should just pick themselves up by their bootstraps.

Re: All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

#49

Post by amelius »

sdk77 wrote: post #29
itishappy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... in summer I might need to pay to feed in the surplus. You're allowed to just disconnect solar panels. It's free and does not damage them.

Sure. Of course. Not being allowed to disconnect them would be ridiculous. But do you want to keep an eye on the market every day, and run to the breaker to turn on an off your inverter? No. So you need a solution for that. Then a battery is much more interesting.

Note: doing this manually every day (breaking the circuit) can increase the risk of damaging your installation.

Re: All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

#50

Post by fragmede »

fallingsquirrel wrote: post #36
bitmasher9 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If every household did this we would have massive problems. We would still need a base load amount in the winter, and in the summer there would be an over abundance. The price of electricity would swing between essentially free in the summer to higher than normal in the winter, because the cost of operating base grid power would be about same but they would need to cover all operating costs during the winter.

Utilities should charge a separate connection fee and per-kWh rate if that's what matches the economic reality of their business. I don't see the summer abundance as an issue. It means we get to shut off the fossil fuels 8 months out of the year. The remaining 4 months, everyone pays a little more per kWh, averaging out to the same cost over a full year. What's not to like?

The economic viability of a fossil fuel plant that's only used 4 months out of the year.

If the plant shuts down because it's no longer economically viable/doesn't cover operating costs, what happens next winter?

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