I got one of those YouTube adds a few weeks back. Was curious so I entered a throwaway email and my neighbor's address to see the numbers at the end (a la Vroom or Carvana). After taking the survey, I got a message saying that they'd try to give me a call. So much for that.
Back in college, I helped a buddy swap the driver's side front fender, and a driver's door on a Fox (his wife banged 'em up). We, of course, had to go get more beer after we took off the banged up fender and door, and before we put salvaged ones on. Was kind of fun driving that thing around without a fender and a door...
Years ago, a good friend was building a dune buggy out of an old Beetle chassis.
He had the body stripped off the floor pan/chassis and had to get it to his buddy’s house for the cutting and welding bit.
He decided to chance it very early one Sunday morning and drive it the mile or so to his friend’s place.
After just a couple of blocks John Law pulled him over. The officer walked up with his ticket book, put one foot up on the left front tire, and started in.
“Let me see your left turn signal.” Check
“Let me see your right turn signal.” Check
“Let’s see your wipers work.” Check
In the end, he let him off with a warning and followed him over to his destination.
This is how you know "domestic terrorism" is mostly kayfabe, because DOMESTIC terrorists wouldn't attack a nuke plant in the heartland, but REAL terrorists who are stirred up by a 70 year American history of waffle-stomping third-party innocents for no reason beyond the Dow Jones Industrial Average, by contrast, might take a shot at it.
Make me wonder about the pop shots at electrical sun stations like in Carthage, NC which caused problems for a bit.
Misguided individuals influenced by media, whacko environmentalists, or just morons.
Probability the last. No one took responsibility and I would like to see people with 0 battery power evacuate after an incident in their battery powered cars when they know the power will not be back on quickly.
Putin doing the same thing to the Ukrainian grid currently.
"smaller nuclear reactors powering the steam generators in the plants we already have"
Amen to that. Connection and transmission infrastructure is exceptionally scarce and expensive. Repurposing Rockport, for example, with SMRs preserves all that investment, works 24/7, and creates long-lasting durable high-wage, high-skill jobs.
There's the minor matter of energy density too - to replace the 2+ gigawatts of Rockport's generation, you'd need around 400 square miles of Ohio covered in panels or wind turbines, and still be praying for wind or sun.
Interesting analysis that basically mirrors my own. A normal electric bill from a summer month for me is about $250. Times 12 times 2-3 is $6K-$9k which is about what I’d pay to make it go away. I think that’s low by at least 100%, maybe 200%, on the high estimate to install solar. So fuck that. And, like you, that doesn’t account for the evil nat gas pipeline that powers my furnace, dryer, hot water heater, oven, and cancer plant, I mean stove top.
Add in that an EV isn’t in the cards for me anytime soon, and I just don’t see the value until AOC shows up at my door with an organic MP4 to take my utilities away.
You could do 8kW of ground-mounted solar for about $20k after the tax credit, which is in its last year. The economics won't make sense for a long time.
I’m on a 50x125’ city lot. No room for ground mounted solar. I have plenty of unobstructed flattish space (~1500sq ft, half of which is southern facing) on my roof but still don’t think the numbers pencil out.
Your wish is in the works... your money will be directed towards the goods and services your betters decide for you whether by incentivizing it so, or disincentivizing whatever it is you are currently spending it on.
Push comes to shove, they'll REQUIRE spending money on shit you don't need. Now if only I could think of real world examples......
To be fair, Mr. City Bus (his dad is an injury lawyer on the defense side, too) has more than surpassed the settlement sum in terms of actual income creation.
And THIS is why I keep reading; references to goat testicles in one comment and grammar correction in the next. Jack’s Joint may not be exclusive but it is diverse/irreverent/entertaining.
Out here in the land of insane electric rates, our solar system paid off in ~ 6 years. And there have been so many solar systems installed that the electric utility is trying all sorts of desperate slimy tricks to claw back that savings via their cronies in the public utility commission.
Prices for solar panels will eventually come down significantly as there are some technology break throughs in the pipeline, so that they will pay off even in Midwest areas. (assuming the utilities don't figure out how to capture all that savings for themselves and screw over homeowners).
A friend of mine from high school worked (might still work) at PRS. I don't even play music and I was a little jelly that he had such a "cool" job right out the gate.
Then I got a cool job and we were even.
Then I voluntarily gave up my cool job for an advancement opportunity and I'm lame again.
Thanks for the real world facts and figures on solar. You’re probably in the worst case scenario there in Ohio where I didn’t see the sun for a number months each winter. Good analogy on the pool - I’m constantly dumping $$ in that hole in my backyard here in Phoenix. I used to justify it because it was one of few places where my two step-daughters would get along with each other for an extended period of time. Now they’re older and seem to just occasionally use the attached hot tub. A backhoe visit is looking a lot more tempting.
Just celebrated my 8th wedding anniversary and a quick analysis in my head says I’ve spent at least $20k on it in that time. I could’ve bought a lot of car parts with that $$!
There's always the possibility that one of our kids will stick around to change our diapers when we get to that point. So far as I know, a boat will never be able to do that for us.
Agree but I am with MD Streeter. I may need help with diapers or to keep me from doing something stupid when I am older. My kid and wife provide infinite entertainment.
But your point is well taken.
Watching my son be a better person than me is payment enough.
When I mentioned to my son that I like won't be able to afford the kind of assisted living situation that my mother had, he said that he and his wife already planned on me moving in with them. Give me a second, I think I got some dust in my eye.
At one time I was spending 22% of my after tax income on my kids' day school tuition. Money well spent, I still believe, s'iz shver tsu zayn a Yid, but a struggle sometimes. Couldn't have done it without scholarships, but that's how the Hebrew day school and yeshiva systems work. Affluent folks pay full rate plus donations from them and less religious wealthy Jews make it possible for regular and poor folks (if you have 8-12 kids, you're likely officially below the poverty line unless you're making a really good living) to afford it.
As for a wife, my ex owns what was *my* grandparents' house but I never mention that.
Sounds similar to our northeast Ohio situation. We're in a purely electric, not-that-well-insulated house (except for my barn office, which is heating oil/r33 ceiling/r17 walls), and home insulation improvement would be a lot more cost effective. I think the day is coming for panels, but I'd like to time it so they're in a pricing trough and will last till the day after I kick the bucket.
One thing that makes me think about putting them up sooner, though, is an idea (based in no particular set of facts) that extreme energy volatility make its way to Ohio.
The energy volatility is a compelling argument. It would take a more optimistic man than myself to think American infrastructure is going to get better in the next 20 years.
That train of thought also makes a decent use case for an electric car if you can charge it with power you produce yourself . The relative merits of gas vs electric don't matter a whole lot when there's no gas in the pumps due to some economic/social/whatever thing.
Yeah. I have 500 gallons of propane and a propane Generac as well. Water comes from the well, waste goes in the septic. There are two million deer in the state and I see a lot of them. And I'm surrounded by the Amish.
All this means, of course, is that I will die of an infected tooth socket in Day 22 of CW II, Electric Boogaloo.
I understand the political motivations to spur tax incentives involved with solar installations but not the ones I've seen from power utilities. Is it really cheaper than building up their own infrastructure on a dollar for dollar basis or are there other carbon indulgences trading hands?
At least around here it's not that it is cheaper than building up their own infrastructure, it's that the state legislature has required a minimum percentage of "renewables" be part of the mix. For fun biomass and hydro don't qualify as "renewables" in this context. Considering that 60% of the electrical power in this state comes from hydro, not counting it as a renewable makes a joke out of all the numbers.
One of the problems is that most of the grids that make up the national grid cover multiple states. The grid operators have no say in the grandstanding by state legislators. There is virtually no chance that rolling blackouts won’t be a part of our National not-too-distant future.
Your comment about placing the total cost of solar into a secure return investment is the real cost of solar as it stands today. I live in the Southern Nevada and to convert our home to solar would cost almost 50K (especially with the install cost that is akin to open heart surgery) that money after you move would continue to buy gobs of electricity. One thing the solar sales folks don't talk about is the solar panels losing a certain amount of power when they get hot and with our summer temps around 110 you can imagine how hot a dark panel would get. Solar cost benefit is not ready for prime time yet unless you're the one selling the system.
Granted, I haven't researched solar very much, but I've never seen a mention of the added cost in the event that you need your roof re-shingled. Probably not an issue for a steel roof, but it was something that I considered immediately.
My roof is ~12 years old. Presumably, I will need it replaced in max 20 years. Would I even break even with a solar install by then? It doesn't appear as so.
Also, I was always worried about structural damage to the existing roof during installation and afterwards. Drilling into a roof doesn’t really seem like a good idea. Of course; I don’t know what is done to potentially mitigate those issues.
We purchased a home ~18 months ago with already-paid for solar panels on the roof. As part of the pre-purchase inspection, it was determined that the roof needed to be replaced, by insurance, for wind damage. Pulling the panels and putting them back on the new roof cost $10k. Seriously. Thankfully, the seller's insurance covered it all.
Nice girl, absolutely stellar body, hard worker in real everyday jobs. Hell, she drove a FedEx truck for a year. Anyone would be lucky to have her but I'm no longer available to parent 20-something girls.
Not sure an OF account on your CV is conducive to getting an MRS before your name. Would you discourage your son from marrying an OF girl?
As for her patrons, they're being exploited maybe even more than she is (OF takes a cut).
After watching stuff on social media about women freaking out because guys they are friendly to ask them out (no, seriously, stuff like asking for a phone number and date, nothing creepy at all) I wonder if teens and young adults don't really know how to engage with people in real life because they spend so much time on online interactions.
We recently hired a fresh college graduate, and I sometimes wonder if he can speak at all. He certainly cannot construct a coherent sentence. E-mail? Fine. Text messaging? Fine. Conversation? Forget about it.
I followed her from your article (I think she took the insta down a while back; could be wrong). The exact type of woman for whom I have some bizarre, freakazoid weakness. Either it’s the juxtaposition of my more staid self with their chaotic nature, their daddy issues clinging to me, or some combo thereof--but I’ve probably lost more time and money to the septum pierced/dyed hair/tattooed woman crowd than I’ll ever get back. Probably why I stopped hanging around Athens, Ohio coffee shops on poetry slam nights.
- You're not the first to mention that you were prohibited from "selling back" to the grid. I was reading a thread on a forum where CA residents mentioned the same. Wasn't selling back power one of the ways that they tried to sell us on home wind and solar?
- What are you doing for backup power out there? Genset running off of propane?
- I can't see making the numbers work unless you want to be completely "off grid." For my shed, even doing a basic 100w panels connected to an inverter and two golf cart batteries would have cost me not much less than I was quoted to run electricity to the structure.
Glad you included the available roof area that you also inherited. Looking at my house in the suburbs, maybe 20% of the roof would be in the ideal area for panels. Unfortunately that same 20% is where all the vents from the gas water heater, gas heaters, and other vents go thru the roof, making the installation of panels even more difficult. That plus the trees in my locale would block all but the most overhead noontime sunlight. So yeah, not really a good option.
For a lot of houses, I'm thinking money would be much more wisely spent on better insulation, better windows, etc. rather than solar panels.
As for the battery system to "store" solar power, that would really only be appropriate for locations where regular electric power is spotty and brown-outs / blackouts are common. Otherwise you really can't justify the cost and headaches with maintaining a bank of batteries.
my house is 100 years old. I replaced all of the windows with double-pane windows. 13 in all (including a double bay window), installed, was about $6k here in Northern California. It made a huge difference in increasing the insulation and reducing the noise.
doing the doors will make a huge difference as well. We had those done in December - it was pricey because we went with solid wood doors made in USA and premium locks and hardware - but not a day has gone by where I haven't been amazed by how much warmer the house is because everything seals properly now.
Yeah, I was surprised how relatively affordable they were. The house was built in 1922 or thereabouts and used wood-framed windows with lead counterweights in the jambs, and over time the house had settled and the wood had swollen and all the other things that old houses do had been done, so most of them would not open more than a couple of inches. I eventually got tired of roasting in stuff air each summer and decided to replace them.
The crew came in and removed the old windows from the inside, hung new vinyl double-pane windows, and sealed everything up. They used white primered trim, so I had to repaint, but it wasn't a big deal. They did the job in a day.
The doors were a much bigger job that required installing pre-hung doors because the old doors had, over time, settled and warped and so forth and were basically parallelograms. it was a chore because the house has lathe-and-plaster walls. Getting the old doors out was messy (and entailed the carpenter providing an intermittent and entertaining stream of profanity uttered in the most imaginative combinations), and took a week to do the front and rear doors. That one ran just into five figures (including the cost of the doors and hardware) but was money well spent. It's amazing what solid varnished wood doors do for the curb appeal of a house, not to mention the insulation and noise reduction.
There's a California study that I can't find right now that proved out using residential solar subsidies for insulation resulted in a 2-3x better energy savings return in the form of lower bills than rooftop solar, but it's not as flashy so who gives a shit that the poors have to pay for a Kardashian to charge their bedroom Camcorder with the sun.
good insulation is key, our house in NY has amazing insulation given its quirky construction but hey it saves on heating costs in the winter and AC in the summer
I had signed up for solar power with SunRun, back in August 2021. Rather than the usual purchase agreement, I entered into a power purchase agreement. The difference: I didn’t buy the panels, I agreed to have them install the panels on my roof and buy the power produced from the panels - at a fixed rate, for a fixed amount of power produced for 25 years. I also have net metering.
If the panels overproduce during a given year, free power for me.
If production falls short, I get a refund check for the shortfall.
Since SunRun owns the panels, if there’s a failure they get to fix it, effectively giving me a 25 year warranty. At the end of the 25 years I can either have them remove it, replace it with a new system (and entering a new agreement), or have them leave it as is - and I then get whatever power is being produced for free, with no more payments.
At a fixed rate of $0.12/KWh, my fixed rate equals the current base rate from Tampa Electric (and is 2 cents cheaper than the penalty rate). So the purchase agreement is a price hedge that is already working for me.
That, and net metering going away (my current net metering credits excess production at the full residential rate.
If they go out of business, I can always stop paying the monthly charge. At less risk to me than if I had bought the system, they go bankrupt, and the system breaks.
The "city bus" version is somewhat better supported.
Doug has, and has always had, a demonstrably loose relationship with the truth. He's an exceptionally cunning person, something I learned first hand at TTAC, but I don't think he is constrained by a normal human being's sense of veracity, morality, or decency.
Reminds me of Paris Hilton. I merely didn't like her when I though she actually WAS stupid. I began to actively hate her once I found out she was just playing dumb.
My folks Florida installation was 2/3 subsidized. It generates the most power when the A/C is cranking too, so that balances well. A while back I roughly calculated a 3 year payback from parents 1/3 of the total cost.
I got one of those YouTube adds a few weeks back. Was curious so I entered a throwaway email and my neighbor's address to see the numbers at the end (a la Vroom or Carvana). After taking the survey, I got a message saying that they'd try to give me a call. So much for that.
It's this car:
https://www.hagerty.com/media/opinion/avoidable-contact/avoidable-contact-68-a-housecat-falls-in-love-once-more-with-a-fox/
The girl drove it for a couple years, overheated it, warped the head, and sold it to me for $800.
Great story!
DT featured a 3 door wagon the other day.
https://dailyturismo.com/foxey-lady-1988-volkswagen-fox/
Unfortunately, it looks like the driver wasn’t quite finished prepping for their colonoscopy.
$5500!
You are an engine swap away from the Deal of the Century.
Back in college, I helped a buddy swap the driver's side front fender, and a driver's door on a Fox (his wife banged 'em up). We, of course, had to go get more beer after we took off the banged up fender and door, and before we put salvaged ones on. Was kind of fun driving that thing around without a fender and a door...
Years ago, a good friend was building a dune buggy out of an old Beetle chassis.
He had the body stripped off the floor pan/chassis and had to get it to his buddy’s house for the cutting and welding bit.
He decided to chance it very early one Sunday morning and drive it the mile or so to his friend’s place.
After just a couple of blocks John Law pulled him over. The officer walked up with his ticket book, put one foot up on the left front tire, and started in.
“Let me see your left turn signal.” Check
“Let me see your right turn signal.” Check
“Let’s see your wipers work.” Check
In the end, he let him off with a warning and followed him over to his destination.
It’s good to be eighteen in a high-trust society.
I'm all for solar power, but the only way it's ever gonna be practical is in the sense of "thermonuclear" rather than "photovoltaic."
That'd be the best kind for Ohio, anyway. Fuel just falls out of the sky!
Would much rather see, smaller nuclear reactors powering the steam generators in the plants we already have. That makes a lot more sense to me.
This is how you know "domestic terrorism" is mostly kayfabe, because DOMESTIC terrorists wouldn't attack a nuke plant in the heartland, but REAL terrorists who are stirred up by a 70 year American history of waffle-stomping third-party innocents for no reason beyond the Dow Jones Industrial Average, by contrast, might take a shot at it.
Make me wonder about the pop shots at electrical sun stations like in Carthage, NC which caused problems for a bit.
Misguided individuals influenced by media, whacko environmentalists, or just morons.
Probability the last. No one took responsibility and I would like to see people with 0 battery power evacuate after an incident in their battery powered cars when they know the power will not be back on quickly.
Putin doing the same thing to the Ukrainian grid currently.
I understand the guys in Pierce County, WA were doing it as a way to cut power to alarm systems in areas where they wanted to rob stores.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/01/04/washington-substation-attack-arrests/
Thank you for sharing.
Like an incompetent Oceans 2.
"smaller nuclear reactors powering the steam generators in the plants we already have"
Amen to that. Connection and transmission infrastructure is exceptionally scarce and expensive. Repurposing Rockport, for example, with SMRs preserves all that investment, works 24/7, and creates long-lasting durable high-wage, high-skill jobs.
There's the minor matter of energy density too - to replace the 2+ gigawatts of Rockport's generation, you'd need around 400 square miles of Ohio covered in panels or wind turbines, and still be praying for wind or sun.
Yep and because it’s nuclear we would need domestic workers.
There is not an app for this. Sorry TikToc
Interesting analysis that basically mirrors my own. A normal electric bill from a summer month for me is about $250. Times 12 times 2-3 is $6K-$9k which is about what I’d pay to make it go away. I think that’s low by at least 100%, maybe 200%, on the high estimate to install solar. So fuck that. And, like you, that doesn’t account for the evil nat gas pipeline that powers my furnace, dryer, hot water heater, oven, and cancer plant, I mean stove top.
Add in that an EV isn’t in the cards for me anytime soon, and I just don’t see the value until AOC shows up at my door with an organic MP4 to take my utilities away.
You could do 8kW of ground-mounted solar for about $20k after the tax credit, which is in its last year. The economics won't make sense for a long time.
I’m on a 50x125’ city lot. No room for ground mounted solar. I have plenty of unobstructed flattish space (~1500sq ft, half of which is southern facing) on my roof but still don’t think the numbers pencil out.
Agreed.
Your wish is in the works... your money will be directed towards the goods and services your betters decide for you whether by incentivizing it so, or disincentivizing whatever it is you are currently spending it on.
Push comes to shove, they'll REQUIRE spending money on shit you don't need. Now if only I could think of real world examples......
To be fair, Mr. City Bus (his dad is an injury lawyer on the defense side, too) has more than surpassed the settlement sum in terms of actual income creation.
True, but that doesn't stop people carping about what Donald Trump got from HIS dad.
Or ignoring what Hunter Biden got from HIS dad.
Incorrect tense used on the verb.
And THIS is why I keep reading; references to goat testicles in one comment and grammar correction in the next. Jack’s Joint may not be exclusive but it is diverse/irreverent/entertaining.
Got, gets, will continue to get. Also, there's the matter of what Hunter Biden's dad gets from Hunter and his associates.
His back scrubbed in the shower?
Out here in the land of insane electric rates, our solar system paid off in ~ 6 years. And there have been so many solar systems installed that the electric utility is trying all sorts of desperate slimy tricks to claw back that savings via their cronies in the public utility commission.
Prices for solar panels will eventually come down significantly as there are some technology break throughs in the pipeline, so that they will pay off even in Midwest areas. (assuming the utilities don't figure out how to capture all that savings for themselves and screw over homeowners).
If you want a stable grid, and you do, there needs to be a fairly low limit on the amount of home solar that’s allowed back onto the grid.
The most basic constraint on the grid is that the electricity supplied to the grid has to exactly match the electricity used at every instant.
Spikes in wind and solar, while manageable with some difficulty, are unmanageable at large scale.
There are several good books on the subject, one of which I’ll recommend. It’s called Shorting the Grid, by Meredith Angwin.
Another point to consider: Why should utilities be forced to buy power from home solar at retail when they can buy it from other sources at wholesale?
"Nice solar setup you got here. Be a real shame if something happened to it ..."
There aren't government and industrial powers forcing the purchase of PRS guitars whilst decomissioning other musical instruments.
not YET.
PRS is in Maryland, and closest to the levers of power. Could happen any day now.
A friend of mine from high school worked (might still work) at PRS. I don't even play music and I was a little jelly that he had such a "cool" job right out the gate.
Then I got a cool job and we were even.
Then I voluntarily gave up my cool job for an advancement opportunity and I'm lame again.
Thanks for the real world facts and figures on solar. You’re probably in the worst case scenario there in Ohio where I didn’t see the sun for a number months each winter. Good analogy on the pool - I’m constantly dumping $$ in that hole in my backyard here in Phoenix. I used to justify it because it was one of few places where my two step-daughters would get along with each other for an extended period of time. Now they’re older and seem to just occasionally use the attached hot tub. A backhoe visit is looking a lot more tempting.
Ugh, pools are such a giant money sink and maintenance PITA.
Just celebrated my 8th wedding anniversary and a quick analysis in my head says I’ve spent at least $20k on it in that time. I could’ve bought a lot of car parts with that $$!
Forgot about the pool thingie. I just realized our pool and spa cost around $1000 per dip based on how often we use them....ugh!
Never do that math, especially for boats.
"If it flies, floats or fucks, rent it."
There's always the possibility that one of our kids will stick around to change our diapers when we get to that point. So far as I know, a boat will never be able to do that for us.
My children have standing orders to pillow me in that contingency. It won't be necessary of course, as fentanyl will be OTC at that point.
I'm going to wander off into the woods never to be seen again. But only after I run out of diapers.
The kids can use the boat to get me out to the ice floe they’ll leave me on.
Yeah but they can use the boat to get rid of the body.
Agree but I am with MD Streeter. I may need help with diapers or to keep me from doing something stupid when I am older. My kid and wife provide infinite entertainment.
But your point is well taken.
Watching my son be a better person than me is payment enough.
When I mentioned to my son that I like won't be able to afford the kind of assisted living situation that my mother had, he said that he and his wife already planned on me moving in with them. Give me a second, I think I got some dust in my eye.
It is going to happen to all of us. They care if they have planned before you told them.
At one time I was spending 22% of my after tax income on my kids' day school tuition. Money well spent, I still believe, s'iz shver tsu zayn a Yid, but a struggle sometimes. Couldn't have done it without scholarships, but that's how the Hebrew day school and yeshiva systems work. Affluent folks pay full rate plus donations from them and less religious wealthy Jews make it possible for regular and poor folks (if you have 8-12 kids, you're likely officially below the poverty line unless you're making a really good living) to afford it.
As for a wife, my ex owns what was *my* grandparents' house but I never mention that.
Unless your wife makes more than you do, and then the math works out pretty well.
Then you truly are living the dream
Q: What is a boat?
A: A hole in the water you dump money into.
"the two best days in your life are the day you buy the boat, and the day you sell the boat."
For me it was the MB 2003 E500 which always had something wrong with it since the day I took delivery, excepting it was the day it was totaled.
BOAT - Bust Out Another Thousand
Math brings reality back quickly.
Unfortunately people don’t do the math 90% of the time. Not that you always need to follow it.
Sounds similar to our northeast Ohio situation. We're in a purely electric, not-that-well-insulated house (except for my barn office, which is heating oil/r33 ceiling/r17 walls), and home insulation improvement would be a lot more cost effective. I think the day is coming for panels, but I'd like to time it so they're in a pricing trough and will last till the day after I kick the bucket.
One thing that makes me think about putting them up sooner, though, is an idea (based in no particular set of facts) that extreme energy volatility make its way to Ohio.
The energy volatility is a compelling argument. It would take a more optimistic man than myself to think American infrastructure is going to get better in the next 20 years.
That train of thought also makes a decent use case for an electric car if you can charge it with power you produce yourself . The relative merits of gas vs electric don't matter a whole lot when there's no gas in the pumps due to some economic/social/whatever thing.
Yeah. I have 500 gallons of propane and a propane Generac as well. Water comes from the well, waste goes in the septic. There are two million deer in the state and I see a lot of them. And I'm surrounded by the Amish.
All this means, of course, is that I will die of an infected tooth socket in Day 22 of CW II, Electric Boogaloo.
Some of them are awfully tough dudes, and ripped besides. I'm glad they're pacifists!
This lineman will have a whole house generac and 1000 gallon propane tank before he retires.
Pro tip: Fish mox forte.
I understand the political motivations to spur tax incentives involved with solar installations but not the ones I've seen from power utilities. Is it really cheaper than building up their own infrastructure on a dollar for dollar basis or are there other carbon indulgences trading hands?
At least around here it's not that it is cheaper than building up their own infrastructure, it's that the state legislature has required a minimum percentage of "renewables" be part of the mix. For fun biomass and hydro don't qualify as "renewables" in this context. Considering that 60% of the electrical power in this state comes from hydro, not counting it as a renewable makes a joke out of all the numbers.
But we need to remove the dams…
One of the problems is that most of the grids that make up the national grid cover multiple states. The grid operators have no say in the grandstanding by state legislators. There is virtually no chance that rolling blackouts won’t be a part of our National not-too-distant future.
I doubt there is a single utility that is voluntarily subsidizing home solar installs. It’s a headache in many ways.
Those that do are almost certainly doing it at the behest of their state politicians.
Your comment about placing the total cost of solar into a secure return investment is the real cost of solar as it stands today. I live in the Southern Nevada and to convert our home to solar would cost almost 50K (especially with the install cost that is akin to open heart surgery) that money after you move would continue to buy gobs of electricity. One thing the solar sales folks don't talk about is the solar panels losing a certain amount of power when they get hot and with our summer temps around 110 you can imagine how hot a dark panel would get. Solar cost benefit is not ready for prime time yet unless you're the one selling the system.
Granted, I haven't researched solar very much, but I've never seen a mention of the added cost in the event that you need your roof re-shingled. Probably not an issue for a steel roof, but it was something that I considered immediately.
My roof is ~12 years old. Presumably, I will need it replaced in max 20 years. Would I even break even with a solar install by then? It doesn't appear as so.
Also, I was always worried about structural damage to the existing roof during installation and afterwards. Drilling into a roof doesn’t really seem like a good idea. Of course; I don’t know what is done to potentially mitigate those issues.
Very little -- and many recently built homes aren't that strong anyway, roof-wise.
So, another reason to shy away from it.
We purchased a home ~18 months ago with already-paid for solar panels on the roof. As part of the pre-purchase inspection, it was determined that the roof needed to be replaced, by insurance, for wind damage. Pulling the panels and putting them back on the new roof cost $10k. Seriously. Thankfully, the seller's insurance covered it all.
Wait, you bought yourself a Fox?
Adopted it, really, from an OnlyFans girl who couldn't keep it running.
She wasn't on the site at the time. Did it later.
Nice girl, absolutely stellar body, hard worker in real everyday jobs. Hell, she drove a FedEx truck for a year. Anyone would be lucky to have her but I'm no longer available to parent 20-something girls.
Not sure an OF account on your CV is conducive to getting an MRS before your name. Would you discourage your son from marrying an OF girl?
As for her patrons, they're being exploited maybe even more than she is (OF takes a cut).
After watching stuff on social media about women freaking out because guys they are friendly to ask them out (no, seriously, stuff like asking for a phone number and date, nothing creepy at all) I wonder if teens and young adults don't really know how to engage with people in real life because they spend so much time on online interactions.
At the very least it has the potential for some very awkward conversations on the receiving line.
We recently hired a fresh college graduate, and I sometimes wonder if he can speak at all. He certainly cannot construct a coherent sentence. E-mail? Fine. Text messaging? Fine. Conversation? Forget about it.
I followed her from your article (I think she took the insta down a while back; could be wrong). The exact type of woman for whom I have some bizarre, freakazoid weakness. Either it’s the juxtaposition of my more staid self with their chaotic nature, their daddy issues clinging to me, or some combo thereof--but I’ve probably lost more time and money to the septum pierced/dyed hair/tattooed woman crowd than I’ll ever get back. Probably why I stopped hanging around Athens, Ohio coffee shops on poetry slam nights.
A few notes on solar:
- You're not the first to mention that you were prohibited from "selling back" to the grid. I was reading a thread on a forum where CA residents mentioned the same. Wasn't selling back power one of the ways that they tried to sell us on home wind and solar?
- What are you doing for backup power out there? Genset running off of propane?
- I can't see making the numbers work unless you want to be completely "off grid." For my shed, even doing a basic 100w panels connected to an inverter and two golf cart batteries would have cost me not much less than I was quoted to run electricity to the structure.
Funny how the offered inducements evaporate once the setup's in place.
Yeah I have a propane Generac.
Glad you included the available roof area that you also inherited. Looking at my house in the suburbs, maybe 20% of the roof would be in the ideal area for panels. Unfortunately that same 20% is where all the vents from the gas water heater, gas heaters, and other vents go thru the roof, making the installation of panels even more difficult. That plus the trees in my locale would block all but the most overhead noontime sunlight. So yeah, not really a good option.
For a lot of houses, I'm thinking money would be much more wisely spent on better insulation, better windows, etc. rather than solar panels.
As for the battery system to "store" solar power, that would really only be appropriate for locations where regular electric power is spotty and brown-outs / blackouts are common. Otherwise you really can't justify the cost and headaches with maintaining a bank of batteries.
my house is 100 years old. I replaced all of the windows with double-pane windows. 13 in all (including a double bay window), installed, was about $6k here in Northern California. It made a huge difference in increasing the insulation and reducing the noise.
doing the doors will make a huge difference as well. We had those done in December - it was pricey because we went with solid wood doors made in USA and premium locks and hardware - but not a day has gone by where I haven't been amazed by how much warmer the house is because everything seals properly now.
Yeah, I was surprised how relatively affordable they were. The house was built in 1922 or thereabouts and used wood-framed windows with lead counterweights in the jambs, and over time the house had settled and the wood had swollen and all the other things that old houses do had been done, so most of them would not open more than a couple of inches. I eventually got tired of roasting in stuff air each summer and decided to replace them.
The crew came in and removed the old windows from the inside, hung new vinyl double-pane windows, and sealed everything up. They used white primered trim, so I had to repaint, but it wasn't a big deal. They did the job in a day.
The doors were a much bigger job that required installing pre-hung doors because the old doors had, over time, settled and warped and so forth and were basically parallelograms. it was a chore because the house has lathe-and-plaster walls. Getting the old doors out was messy (and entailed the carpenter providing an intermittent and entertaining stream of profanity uttered in the most imaginative combinations), and took a week to do the front and rear doors. That one ran just into five figures (including the cost of the doors and hardware) but was money well spent. It's amazing what solid varnished wood doors do for the curb appeal of a house, not to mention the insulation and noise reduction.
There's a California study that I can't find right now that proved out using residential solar subsidies for insulation resulted in a 2-3x better energy savings return in the form of lower bills than rooftop solar, but it's not as flashy so who gives a shit that the poors have to pay for a Kardashian to charge their bedroom Camcorder with the sun.
In America, spending more money on a house just gets you MORE house, not a BETTER house.
good insulation is key, our house in NY has amazing insulation given its quirky construction but hey it saves on heating costs in the winter and AC in the summer
Regarding the batteries— anything regarding fires related to them? I haven’t heard of any; but it’s something that would concern me.
I wouldn't want any lithium battery outside of a phone or laptop located near my house.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/e-bike-batteries-blamed-for-25-nyc-fires-2-deaths-in-2023-now-fdny-is-cracking-down/4122413/
I had signed up for solar power with SunRun, back in August 2021. Rather than the usual purchase agreement, I entered into a power purchase agreement. The difference: I didn’t buy the panels, I agreed to have them install the panels on my roof and buy the power produced from the panels - at a fixed rate, for a fixed amount of power produced for 25 years. I also have net metering.
If the panels overproduce during a given year, free power for me.
If production falls short, I get a refund check for the shortfall.
Since SunRun owns the panels, if there’s a failure they get to fix it, effectively giving me a 25 year warranty. At the end of the 25 years I can either have them remove it, replace it with a new system (and entering a new agreement), or have them leave it as is - and I then get whatever power is being produced for free, with no more payments.
At a fixed rate of $0.12/KWh, my fixed rate equals the current base rate from Tampa Electric (and is 2 cents cheaper than the penalty rate). So the purchase agreement is a price hedge that is already working for me.
That's the best way to do it, assuming they stay in business.
The disappearance of the tax credit will shake the industry the way a dog shakes a rat.
That, and net metering going away (my current net metering credits excess production at the full residential rate.
If they go out of business, I can always stop paying the monthly charge. At less risk to me than if I had bought the system, they go bankrupt, and the system breaks.
Is Demuro's garbage truck story even true? Check out the comments here:
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/have-you-seen-doug-demuros-new-car/122775/page1/
I had never heard this about him. I always just assumed he came from parents money. It always kinda looked that way to me.
Meh, everybody comes from somebody. Not everyone can be the son of a Virginia turd miner and the grandson of a goat ball licker.
Thinking about it too much is just sour grapes.
The "city bus" version is somewhat better supported.
Doug has, and has always had, a demonstrably loose relationship with the truth. He's an exceptionally cunning person, something I learned first hand at TTAC, but I don't think he is constrained by a normal human being's sense of veracity, morality, or decency.
Reminds me of Paris Hilton. I merely didn't like her when I though she actually WAS stupid. I began to actively hate her once I found out she was just playing dumb.
My folks Florida installation was 2/3 subsidized. It generates the most power when the A/C is cranking too, so that balances well. A while back I roughly calculated a 3 year payback from parents 1/3 of the total cost.