Unless you're getting the actual LMP price (as of this comment $.021/kwh) less your utility's cost to maintain and transmit that power, your neighbors are subsidizing those coal-fired, China slave-labor wafer made PV panels on the roof. Rooftop solar makes sense in, say, the UP, if I want to be fully disconnected from any utility. Outside of that, to run your lift and welders, AC at night or when its cloudy, the solar PV panels do nothing except raise your neighbors' rates.
The bulk of an energy bill is in the fixed generation and transmission capacity needed to serve load - not the gas/uranium/coal/wood/trash (er, renewable biomass)/oil burned to run the plant. Plants don't scale that quickly, and the incremental power provided by solar PV is the same as taking a dump on an airplane and thinking its now a lighter ship.
The power produced by solar often isn't needed and is like watering a lawn during a rainstorm, forcing dispatchable plants (those that can run without regard to the weather) to losses based on the crazy RTO market rules.
California doesn't use Gigawatts of unneeded solar every month of every year - even during days of their energy crisis - because energy is the quintessential real time commodity. Not to mention all the happy thoughts of mother Earth won't change the fact it gets dark, which is when the coal plants really start turning up the heat and grid demand begins to peak. Even a 100% solar grid in a perfect world where every day was sunny and cloudless, the inability to store any meaningful amount of grid-scale electricity requires the same or more amount of standby fossil or nuclear generation. The NBER determined 1.14 MW of fossil generation is required for every 1MW of renewable generation to ensure minimum grid reliability.
I could rant about this all day, but the renewable fantasies, subsidization, and tax incentives resulted in a massive misallocation of resources to China, emboldened Russia, and spiked inflation that easily could have secured energy independence for generations and a cleaner environment - I'm no greenie, however, I think most reasonable people wouldn't agree with turning the Cuyahoga River back into a flammable, orange, fetid sewer.
One only need to look at BASF's Q4 results delivered Friday, where they're essentially closing Germany to focus on areas with better energy policy. The irony of all of this is Germany went straight back to the dirtiest kind of coal to ensure it had power despite all its self-righteous green virtue signaling.
I agree with everything you say. But the powers that be set up the rules that way and I'm going to take advantage of them.
I don't give a rip about climate change, but do hate spending money. When I went solar in 2015, the math was close to break even (negative if you consider the investment value of the cash), but I didn't want to ever worry about the cost of electricity again. Now I laugh when SDG&E announces a rate increase.
I dial the air conditioning down to where *I* want it, and if the lights are on when I leave the house I don't bother to turn them off. Since installing, I have only spent about $300 *total* in the last seven years.
Are the poor, the apartment and condo dwellers, and other "disadvantaged" persons burdened by subsidizing my net-zero solar metering? Probably. Do I feel guilty? No. Blue state California set up these rules and it's about time some of their policies tilted in favor of the taxpaying class.
...and by "taxpaying class" I mean those 10% of earners paying ~90% of all income taxes.
That’s the only rational thing to do. I don’t feel antipathy at all for those who have solar installs. I just think it’s important to be clear-eyed about what’s going on.
Dude, BASF is closing in Germany because the US fucking blew up Germany's gas pipeline to Russia. That is the only reason. We committed an act of war on Germany because we want them to buy our LNG or now Norway's and not Russia's cheaper gas.
Germany was making a slow transition away from fossil fuels, albeit I think with some bad decisions about nuclear in the short-mid term. Their problem right now is not that renewables aren't fully integrated, it is that 45% of their gas infrastructure was fucking blown up by us, their "ally" because they were getting cold feet (literally and figuratively) about our proxy war in Ukraine.
20 years ago the US ruled the solar panel business (Note that Germany also makes solar panels). The US, and here in the EU to a lesser degree, sold out our national/EU interests to allow big corporations to relocate their plants to China.
There is no reason why we couldn't keep those industries in the US AND keep regulations to protect people's water and air. It is a matter of political priorities. I know it is possible, as there is lots of heavy industry in Germany and here in Austria, and we have excellent air and water quality. The price is that big companies don't make the profits they do in the US, let alone in China. I live in a city of nearly 2,000,000 people, and 40% of our energy comes from renewables.
This is not a matter of "renewable fantasies" it is a matter of political corruption. Since Reagan convinced everyone that we are our own enemy - i.e. "government is the problem" the US has seen a transfer of $50 TRILLION dollars to the top 1% while US infrastructure has gone to shit. Turns out, when you give ultra rich people super low taxes, they spend that money buying politicians.
I could rant about this all day. The US of my youth in the 70s is gone. That kind of life does exist, but in countries like Austria where the rich can't completely buy the government. There are 8 billion people on this planet. We have to make some changes to how we generate power or we're going to die out a a species.
I've never trusted Sy Hersh and I think he's been wrong a lot more than he's been right. He has to say something outrageous every now and then to keep his own name in the news.
The rich can buy the government anywhere they choose, to think otherwise is naive. It may actually be easier in ministerial governments.
The precipitous decline in American manufacturing accelerated over the edge when NAFTA was signed. The regularization of trade with China in 2000 was pretty much the final kick to the head.
I am turning into a PJ O’Rourke quote bot: “When senators and congressmen determine what is bought and sold, the first thing bought and sold are senators and congressmen.”
I agree fully with your last two paragraphs, particularly about Ross Perot. It must have really sucked for him to play the role of Cassandra while watching the Ds and Rs destroy the US middle class. To have so much wealth and influence and still not be able to steer the US economy away from the iceberg.
Regarding your first paragraph, you're right and wrong. Of course money influences every government. The degree of influence matters massively. After WWII Europe was literally and pyschologically destroyed. People who had been bitter enemies for hundreds of years came together after two massive world wars and agreed a system of cooperation would be better than continuing to wipe ourselves out every generation or two.
From those ashes a new social contract was created that has been eroded since the 90s, particularly in the UK, but still functions an order of magnitude or more than in the US. That is why the happiest people in the world will be found in these social democracies. Vienna, where I live for decades, was voted the best city to live in for about 10 years in a row until just recently. That is largely due to having a socialist mayor since the end of WWII.
One of the key factors in this happiness is limiting the amount of corporate capture and government corruption. Of course we have corrupt politicians. Very corrupt. But their corruption is about 2 orders of magnitude lower than the US, and that makes a huge difference in the day to day lives of populace, because politicians must still perform for the people, or they lose power. That has not been the case in the US for at least 20 years.
I bow to your experience in Austria. Ireland is the only European country with which I have extensive personal experience and it is a horror show.
Corrupt from top to bottom with a compliant press and state owned television and radio networks.
Even more than in the US there exists a yawning chasm between the rulers (Certain Dublin areas) and the ruled (everywhere else).
A National health service that’s in tatters, no housing for the native Irish, but plenty for “asylum-seekers” and refugees. The latter at least have a moral case, the asylum seekers are known mostly for tearing up and flushing their passports on the flight into Dublin.
A ridiculous energy policy that plants windmills all over rural Ireland and does very little for the grid.
Horrible entirely.
That could be Celtic efficiency and talent vs Teutonic.
Germany's secret sauce since WWII was trading manufactured goods made with cheap USSR, now Russian, commodities. With the wall up, Ostpolitik provided too many Marks for the USSR to screw it up.
Numerous sources document Russian penetration of German politics to shape the 'renewable' policies and positioning heavy dependence on natural gas as a clean, friendly 'bridge' to a solar-panel filled future, starting with former Chancellor Schroeder on the damn board of Rosneft. The same dynamics apply in the US - natural gas lobbyists love renewables because it only increases demand for their product. Fortunately, our gas comes mostly from within our own borders.
Regardless of who blew up Nord Stream, the fact that Germany was crippled by it proves my point - they voluntarily outsourced their most critical commodities to Russia and chose to do so with a hobbled military incapable of closing a hot dog stand. In the scramble for every molecule of natural gas, heat and electricity won out. Germany spent half a trillion euros last year subsidizing energy - that's a lot of money. France, on the other hand, did not because it's far less dependent on gas.
To your point about solar panels, China stole the IP, and worldwide consumers were happy to buy from the cheaper provider. China "makes" about 97% of solar panels - other countries may assemble them, but only China manufactures them. Polysilicon production requires hundreds of megawatts of power and China is happy to throw up unfiltered coal plants to serve that load with zero regard for environmental impacts.
Renewable fantasies are the definition of political corruption and exactly why Reagan, Eisenhower, and others warned about government. The laws of physics apply to all without regard to political beliefs, and a wind/solar grid defies the laws of physics. These renewable portfolio standards crammed down ratepayers throats do nothing but increase costs for the poor, and wealthy homeowners with rooftop solar arrays and subsidized $100,000 EVs benefit, e.g. https://epic.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Do-Renewable-Portfolio-Standards-Deliver.pdf
To your point about Austria's grid, while it's great on AVERAGE, 40% of energy comes from renewable resources, it's similar to me saying my house is an 'average' of 70 degrees because it's either 0 degrees or 140 degrees inside. Austria entirely depends on gas as its marginal power source to fill in the gaps, and the bulk of Austria's renewable power comes from hydro, not intermittent weather dependent renewables. An electric grid is a gigantic synchronized machine - being a tenth of a percent short on load serving power means frequency drops, equipment breaks, and you're dealing with rolling blackouts. No business can operate with that.
The tradeoff to the money in US politics - at least in Germany - is you have utter morons like Habeck representing fringe parties with serious influence over policies instead of being relegated to an undesirable committee assignment. And a very large chunk of US energy policy is decided at the state level, or through regional transmission operators accountable to no one. We do get good decisions as well - Gov. Pritzker in Illinois deserves all the credit for ensuring its nuclear fleet remained operational and now its citizens are reaping the rewards in the form of meaningful credits on electricity bills.
I love it when people assert that we blew up Nordstream, as if the Russians don't have an -extensive- history of vandalising their own assets if they think it will gain them some sort of meaningful strategic advantage.
Forczyk's account of the North Caucasus campaign in 42' dives into this a bit.
I love it when people try to fit a square peg example from literally 80 years ago into the round hole of a completely different situation today:
1) If there was REALLY an extensive history of Russia doing this, you wouldn't have to reach back 80 friggin' years to find one now, would you?
2) In 1942 the USSR was in a direct battle with Germany destroying oil infrastructure so that Germany couldn't use it. The USSR also went behind German enemy lines to destroy weapons and ammo (the other example from 80 years ago I've heard on this same topic.) Both of those are completely different from the current situation. Or are you saying Ukraine was about to take over Nordstream I and II and Russia blew it up to keep the Ukrainians from getting it. THAT would be a round peg/round hole situation.
If Russia wanted a strategic advantage, they'd have blown up the Norwegian gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea that - what a coincidence! - started operation the day after the US blew up NS I and II. That would have given Europe no new LNG option except the 4x more expensive US gas. That would have been an act of war against Norway - which of course the NS I/II sabotage was as well, but unlike with NS I/II, Norway, Sweden, and Germany would not be sitting on their reports of who did it like they are now.
Sweden and Germany (not sure about Norway) have said they cannot release the findings of their reports for National Security reasons. Well, since Russia is NOT in a security alliance with either of those countries, I can see no argument that these countries could not say preliminary reports say it was Russia who blew up NS I/II without giving any details that would compromise "sources and methods."
My point is that you are projecting your 'logical' western mindset onto Russians who do not operate according to that paradigm.
The Russians operate according to the logic of their own culture which is informed by..... Guess what!? -Things that happened 80 fucking years ago- not even that, things that happened 100-200 years ago. This is how they beat Napoleon as well, by burning down their own fucking cities. So with this historical and cultural context in mind, are you really trying to tell me the Russians are above destroying one or two of their own pipelines?
Let's get into the Russian motives shall we? They know there isn't a snowballs chance in hell they can continue with business as usual after launching this bloodbath, so why not demolish those pipelines so they can spin the narrative that the West is at war with them? For the price of a few pipelines they have useful idiots like you and Hersh spinning this bullshit about how America has committed an act of war against Germany - This is exactly the sort of Active Measure the Russians have been perpetrating for the last 100 fucking years.
And no, Sweden and Germany are not going to release their findings, it isn't about them covering for the Americans, it's about protecting intelligence assets. They also don't want to 'escalate' the situation because the Europeans are clinging to the fantasy -still- that we are not at war with Russia, even after 100,000 Ukrainians have been slaughtered.
No, I'm not telling you it is impossible that Russia would destroy their own pipeline, I'm just telling you that in this instance it was 99.9999999% likely the US did it.
There was no tactical, strategic, or financial advantage to Russia blowing up their own pipeline, just the opposite. If they wanted to blow up a pipeline and pretend it wasn't them, they'd have blown up the Norwegian pipeline that opened up - just by coincidence - the day after the Russian pipeline was blown up.
Russia doesn't have to spin the narrative that the US is at war with them. We have enough people saying it directly. Like our demented president who said Putin cannot remain in power.
You're completely wrong about the possibility for "business as usual" to continue during the war. It was, and the Germans were getting cold feet about continuing. That is why the US blew up the fucking pipeline, to make sure Germany could not back out. The European populace overwhelmingly says they want the war to end.
There was a demonstration just a few days ago in Berline with 50,000 people saying Germany needs to get out of the war. There were 70,000 in Prague last fall, and about 10,000 here in Vienna, and Austria isn't even part of NATO. We got lucky with a mild winter this season for heating, but businesses are suffering massively with a lack of gas. Another 10 months of this will only make the situation here worse.
The Germans aren't stupid, just stuck between a rock and a hard place. They are vassals to the US but most people know that it was the US who blew up their pipeline.
The US is so pathetic in our lies about the bombing that we've concocted what I call the "Gilligan's Island" story. Some random Ukrainians on a three-hour tour of the Baltic sea somehow managed to slip by all the surveliance carrying tons of C4, dive to the bottom of the ocean and then blow up the pipelines, but they were so inept that they left their passports and explosive residue on boat. "Doh, GilliigAAAN!!"
And you say that Seymour Hersh's story is bullshit? LOL.
But there -is- a strategic reason for Russia to blow up that pipeline.
It is in their interest to make themselves look like the victim, as if this war was imposed on them rather than the opposite, which is the truth.
For now, the nuclear factor has kept escalation in check and has meant that the West is not directly fighting Russia on the battlefield, so for the Russians it makes sense for them to try and spin the narrative that the United States has committed and act of war against them, and this is a useful pretext for that.
So yes, it gives the Russians a useful strategic political edge on the world stage to pretend they are the ones who are the victims who have been attacked, it undermines support for Ukraine in the west, and bolsters support for Russia, which have material effects.
You do also know right, that NS has been put on hold the last 8 years since Russia originally invaded Ukraine? That was a sanction committed to even when the Germans were openly avoiding conflict with Russia, so now Russia has shown its true colours, it was never going to be possible to greenlight using NS, so it wasn't going to be business as usual even if NS wasn't blown up, and therefore destroying that asset for political gain would be an acceptable cost.
It doesn't matter that Sahra Wagenknecht can get 10,000 people on the streets of Berlin. This what is truly unforgivable about Germany's lack of support for Ukraine - leftists like her and the SPD leadership have spent the last 80 years lecturing the rest of Germany about their supposed 'guilt', yet the Ukrainians, who alongside the Poles and Jews are the biggest victims of Nazism are being left out to dry simply because these idiots don't understand their history, and believe that it is -Russia- who is the eternal victim of Hitler's fascism rather than the co-conspirators they actually are.
As for the attack itself, the Ukrainians managed to blow up the Crimean bridge, one of the most hardened targets in the Russian Federation, and Nemtsovs assassins penetrated one of the most heavily defended parts of Moscow, so no, Russian security is not what you think. I don't think the Ukrainians did it, but where there's a will, there's a way.
One small disagreement. The Cuyahoga is a slow moving, meandering river whose curves catch a lot of debris, debris that has apparently been being ignited by lightning and burning since before Europeans arrived in North America. Not saying there wasn't industrial waste in the river but in my mind the burning Cuyahoga meme is a bit akin to the Saigon Execution photo of Eddie Adams. It doesn't tell the whole story.
"It really works. It just doesn’t make a lot of economic sense — but neither does a swimming pool, and a lot of people have those."
Can't float around on solar panels enjoying a beer in summer. Maybe if cutting our carbon footprint was more fun more people would dig themselves deeper into debt to make it happen.
For sure -- but there are a LOT of people whose emotional relationship with "sustainability" and "the environment" is just as strong as the bizarre emotional relationship some people have with completely uncaring BRANDS like, for example, Porsche, or Rolex.
I don't know if I'd say a LOT of people...give people the choice between financing a Porsche and financing a solar system on their house and I suspect (based solely on my own jaded view of the world) that we'd see a lot more 911s on the road...maybe Taycan's because they want to feel better about their decision.
If we start seeing some IG influencers showing off their hot new solar panels then that attitude will probably change.
You probably don't know the right people. My brother--who is not a car person--used to get a huge kick out of driving his Prius, he claimed, because of the gas mileage. I don't know if this is still true. He hasn't talked about it in a handful of years. But I have friends like this. One friend, his wife owns a Jetta diesel, which I just love to drive, and so does she. The Jetta diesel's husband has a Hyundai Ironiq 5, which he seems to prefer driving over the Jetta, as strange as that seems to me. I drove an Iconic 5 once--at a car journalists' event on Bear Mountain in New York state, a location where if the car is at all fun, the driving is fun. But as you probably know, being a reader of Baruth, EVs have no personality, no matter how much torque they can muster, and the Ionic 5 can muster plenty.
I, on the other hand, am well versed in the importance of reducing CO2 emissions. I learned about global warming in a class at UC Berkeley in 1975, given by John Holdren, who ultimately became Pres O's Science Advisor. I've written a moderate amount about global warming. But I also know that I could drive my CO2 emissions down to the level of your average Bangladeshi without changing US emissions. In any case, you'd have to pry my cold dead hands off of the steering wheel and gear shift knob on my middle-aged Civic, by far my favorite material possession.
I'd argue that even non-car people would be swayed by a high-end sports car given the choice mostly based on the name recognition and the fact they can brag about owning a Porsche. That's based not on my circle of friends (who are engineers and would consider the long term cost of ownership of a Porsche versus a solar system) but on one, single data point: look at the number of YouTube subscribers that someone like Will Prowse has versus PewDiePie. Will Prowse reviews energy storage solutions and enjoys providing any information you'd need to add solar to your home. He has 807,000 subscribers. PewDiePie records himself playing video games and has 111 million subscribers. Based on this alone, I going to lean harder into my opinion that more people would chose a fancy car over solar.
Since you mention a Jetta diesel, I daily drive and autocross a Golf TDI while my wife's daily driver is an A3 TDI. The 2.0 common rail diesel in the mk6 Golf platform paired to their 6 speed manual is a god damned riot for commuting at speeds closer to legal and holds its own really well for autocross due to all that torque. My wife's A3 is a 2015 and is of the last generation of diesels that VW brought over before they got caught cheating. Hers has the 6 speed dual-clutch automatic and will spin the tires in the 1-2 shift when pulling away from a light. Can't say any of that about a Prius.
I'm disappointed that dieselgate happened partly because they were cheating emissions but mostly because they got caught and it killed small diesels here in the US. I feel like the small passenger diesel engines would be a perfect transition between gas engines and EVs during these transition years.
It’s not just here, diesels are going away all over the EU because of particulate emissions. This is the same EU that was all in on passenger diesels 20 years ago.
Mark my words, particulate pollution from tire wear is looming over the horizon.
We’ll all be Amish before long. Well not the people in Capital City of course, not them.
If I had a dollar for every complaint about some group that got answered by "You just haven't met the right ones," I could buy and operate my own Carrier Strike Group for ten years.
There are plenty of these people in blue metro areas like SF, Seattle, LA, Boston, DC, etc, and I know a lot of them.
But I am NOT saying that there aren't plenty of people who'd rather have a fun car, like a Jetta TDI or a Cayman than an EV or a solar system, including myself.
But these H. sapiens brains are the most complicated devices in our solar system, and it should not be surprising that some people have preferences that others cannot fathom, and vice versa, and people do a lot of self sorting.
This is a good point -- the ONE WAY loyalty expressed by people is mysterious. I capitalize to emphasize how true it is. People desperately want to be part of something which will impress their peers. It may be bizarre, but it is also ubiquitous.
The economics of solar are a joke, which is why they still have to sell it via, tax breaks, cheesy YouTube ads, and sleazy hard sell tactics. It'll be awhile before I even think about....
WAIT A MINUTE, IS THAT A VOLKSWAGEN FOX!?! FUCK YOUR SOLAR PANELS, TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE VW!
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.
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.
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.
"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."
This x100. Most homes are built like shit. Minimum code requirements for energy efficiency. Remember when houses used to have windows on all four sides for good cross ventilation? Remember whole house fans? It wouldn't be that difficult to reduce the AC load in the summer if we collectively held builders to a higher standard.
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.
My house is 110+ years old. I don't even want to know what it would cost me to fix the Windows. Heck, I should probably fix the front door that just leaks air first.
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.
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
My next door neighbor just spend $15,000 for putting new roof shingles on their house and related work. If solar panels were designed so that they could completely replace roof shingling, perhaps they might make more economic sense.
On a "behind the music" type show about the only MTV Cribs episode that anyone remembers, i.e. Redman's duplex, I learned that almost all of Cribs were just rented for the shoot. The crew was shocked when they showed up at his place and realized he had given them his actual address.
I'm currently looking at solar. It's probably going to cost me about 25K and that's after taking into account the government tax credit. Cash out of hand will most likely be over $35K.
With the tax credit I'm looking at about 12 to 13 years before I hit break even, on the assumption that electrical prices don't increase. The system I'm looking at is a between 10Kwh and 17Kwh. I use a LOT of electricity, about 30Kwh on an average day in the winter.
My house is heat/cooled by a heat pump. Propane is EXPENSIVE out here and getting out of the contract with Amerigas requires a lawyer (that I'm going to have to retain eventually).
I just had a new HVAC system put in (the one the house came with died hard at the ripe old age of 10yrs - previous owner must have figured he'd be dead before it died - and he was right). I've thought about using a ground source heatpump for heating the house (hint: Don't use them for AC, not a good idea) then at least I wouldn't have issues when it got down to freezing (which it's NOT supposed to do so often here in Texas).
The problem that all of us are really facing is that our government hates us, or they'd be building nuke plants all over the damn country and then electricity would go back to being 2 or 3 cents a Kwh.
One of those things that they don't teach you in school is that how advanced your society is, is based directly on how much excess energy your society generates. If you don't have cheap energy, you don't have a renaissance or a wealth of science, ideas, and progress. This country had cheap energy up until about 30 - 40 years ago and it's been downhill ever since. And it's our government that has been taking cheap energy away ever since the 70's. We have more oil than any other place in the world - yet we're not allowed to drill it. More uranium - but we're not allowed to use it. More Coal!!! - but we're not allowed to mine it (thanks Bill Clinton).
At least I'll probably be dead by the time the solar panels I'm buying start to fail (they only last 20 to 25 years). And for all of you saying that 'fusion is the answer!' - It isn't. If it ever becomes possible and profitable our government will ban it in 24 hours.
Nuclear for base load generation is really the only answer here in the US. Unfortunately, I don’t think that we as a society will be able to responsibly operate nuclear plants moving forward.
In a world where you have to hire by quota, and where the majority of "americans" are bound by moral systems and rules that would have been utterly alien to Nathaniel Hawthorne, any sort of nuclear power is a dangerous bet.
I expect planes to start falling out of the sky within twenty years, and bridges to be mostly theoretical in thirty.
737s were being flown into the ground by incompetent pilots who were afraid to disconnect the automatic pitch trim and leave it disconnected. Boeing didn’t cover itself with glory, but my advice is to stay away from third world airlines.
Correct. A good friend of mine is a Delta pilot and indicated to me that pretty much any american trained pilot would not have had an issue correcting it. He also has echoed for years to stay away from third world airlines.
Joy Reid has a Harvard degree. Think about that, but then Pete Buttigieg went to Harvard *and* Oxford and look at his stellar record.
How soon before lots of folks die because of woke med schools?
Frankly, it's the rejection of empiricism that worries me most, the "ways of knowledge", the "lived experience". Perhaps the intent is to make it all subjective
People have to stand up and call out the bullshit for what it is.
As a Jew I'm pretty aware of what it's like to live as a minority, sometimes hated, sometimes in a hostile uberkultur, but hard work and meritocracy are not white, gentile value. They're institutionalized and normalizing patronizing behavior.
"The problem that all of us are really facing is that our government hates us, or they'd be building nuke plants all over the damn country and then electricity would go back to being 2 or 3 cents a Kwh. . . . . . This country had cheap energy up until about 30 - 40 years ago and it's been downhill ever since."
This corresponds with the Three Mile Island incident, and subsequent increase of regulation of the nuclear power industry. The advent of fracking gave us a period of low cost natural gas causing in part the withdrawal of several nuclear power plant permits.
Interesting facts: "All of the used nuclear fuel produced by the U.S. nuclear energy industry over the last 60 years could fit on a football field at a depth of less than 10 yards.", "The U.S. generates about 2,000 metric tons of spent fuel each year . . . avoiding more than 400 million metrics tons of carbon dioxide emissions", and "More than 90% of its potential energy still remains in the fuel, even after five years of operation in a reactor. - US Department of Energy.
WRT U.S. nuclear waste: the Simpsons, and others, showing nuclear waste as huge quantities of big barrels full with glowing goo is stuck in the mind for many. The reality is much less exciting as the spent rods don't take up much space, but try convincing people that what they know is wrong.
Very true, but it has to be acknowledged that the low-level waste is much bulkier. Rags, tools, supplies that have been used in the containment vessel all need long-term storage too.
..."Titled “The Sky’s the Limit,” it begins by declaring that “solar and wind potential is far higher than that of fossil fuels and can meet global energy demand many times over.” Taken by itself, that’s not a very bold claim: scientists have long noted that the sun directs more energy to the Earth in an hour than humans use in a year. But, until very recently, it was too expensive to capture that power. That’s what has shifted—and so quickly and so dramatically that most of the world’s politicians are now living on a different planet than the one we actually inhabit. On the actual Earth, circa 2021, the report reads, “with current technology and in a subset of available locations we can capture at least 6,700 PWh p.a. [petawatt-hours per year] from solar and wind, which is more than 100 times global energy demand.” And this will not require covering the globe with solar arrays: “The land required for solar panels alone to provide all global energy is 450,000 km2, 0.3% of the global land area of 149 million km2. That is less than the land required for fossil fuels today, which in the US alone is 126,000 km2, 1.3% of the country.” These are the kinds of numbers that reshape your understanding of the future.
We haven’t yet fully grasped this potential because it’s happened so fast. In 2015, zero per cent of solar’s technical potential was economically viable—the small number of solar panels that existed at that time had to be heavily subsidized. But prices for solar energy have collapsed so fast over the past three years that sixty per cent of that potential is already economically viable. And, because costs continue to slide with every quarter, solar energy will be cheaper than fossil fuels almost everywhere on the planet by the decade’s end. (It’s a delicious historical irony that this evolution took place, entirely by coincidence, during the Administration of Donald Trump, even as he ranted about how solar wasn’t “strong enough” and was “very, very expensive.”) The Carbon Tracker report, co-written by Kingsmill Bond, is full of fascinating points, including how renewable energy is the biggest gift of all for some of the poorest nations, including in Africa, where solar potential outweighs current energy use by a factor of more than a thousand. Only a few countries—Singapore, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and a handful of European countries—are “stretched” in their ability to rely on renewables, because they both use a lot of energy and have little unoccupied land. In these terms, Germany is in the third-worst position, and the fact that it is nonetheless one of the world’s leaders in renewable energy should be a powerful signal: “If the Germans can find solutions, then so can everyone else.”"
Today, at 10 am EST, the plurality of Germany’s electricity is being generated by burning coal. In second place is gas, then solar, next is burning biomass, followed by wind.
There’s a free app called Electricity Maps that shows the carbon intensity for many of the grids around the world. It’s very interesting.
I’d very much recommend reading Shorting the Grid by Meredith Angwin. She’s someone who is concerned about Global Warming, but has a realistic, cold-eyed appraisal of renewables.
What would make a GSHP not a good idea for AC? It's extremely common now for whole homes to be heated here in Canada with just mini splits. Their CoP is 2 to 3 whereas a GSHP is easily in the 4 to 6 range. With any electric heat source I'd highly recommend a whole home backup generator and ideally propane backup heat. 30kw-h would be a low average around here. We average, in the winter, in a large home, 90kw-h a day with a ground source heat pump and a garage mini split.
The problem with using a GSP for cooling your house is that the pipes in the ground start to bake the ground. This will over time make the ground pull away from the pipes, or get harder, and it will lower the efficiency of the heat pump.
I don't think it'd be an issue in an adequately sized system. If that were the case my pipes would be frozen and it'd cost a lot more than $10 a day to heat a 4800sf home and 900sf garage in 10 degree weather.
Fusion isn't happening. Since 1943 it's remained 50 years in the future, and there it still remains. The most interesting article I've read was about a huge experimental reactor in France, that's being constructed by multiple countries. It's obvious from the article that the author is highly intrigued by fusion, and wants it to work. It's also obvious that it's far too complicated--too vulnerable to Murphy's law--to ever work.
Since it seems like a lot of people here care about this, I'd strongly encourage all to:
- if you live in a state (like Michigan) with renewable portfolio standards, write your statehouse legislators
- when your utility files a rate case, make comments! It's your right - show up at the public hearings, question assumptions, point out that renewable-driven higher electric bills mean fewer teachers in classrooms, higher water/sewer bills, etc. Ask where the solar panels come from, whether they're made with forced labor, and how the utility (that collects the lucrative tax credits only to dump them as Duke, AEP, and others recently did). Why are they forcing you to buy this stuff?
- Support initiatives to preserve nuclear plants - carbon free with the highest capacity factor by a mile
- Oppose net metering subsidies
- Call out hypocritical "REC" shell games
Learn more about this as I believe energy constraints and the instability they cause will be the defining feature of the next decade - Pakistan today applied for IMF money directly caused by EU nations driving gas prices sky high.
"Shorting the Grid" by Meredith Angwin is a great book that most libraries have, as is Decouple Podcast.
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.
here in nyc, everything is upside down. until about ten years ago, when they finally installed meters, i paid no utilities. it was just built into the rent. i was charged an extra $120 per year for each ac unit. the building had cogen steam heat. the steam is created from waste heat at the con-edison electricity plants and piped in. they've been doing that since long before green was a thing. my building stopped using the steam because it's cheaper to burn fossil fuels so they installed a gigantic furnace about ten years ago. i kid you not. i'm still not charged for my gas stove (but gov hochul wants to make gas stoves illegal).
other fun facts. water is not metered. the building pays a flat rate based on the number of units. they have collection for my food scraps so we can save the world with compost but no collection of old rechargeable batteries. they mostly end up in the landfill poisoning the ground water. the craziness goes on and on...
It is absolute insanity that places moved away from using waste heat. While I don't care for steam heat, it does work well and that waste has to go somewhere... why not use it? It's akin to having a heater core in a car.
It also is absolutely stupid that many, many recycling places will not take things such as GLASS or BATTERIES. Am I crazy in thinking glass was incredibly easy to recycle? Like, we did it pre-aluminum all the things. And, you're totally right about batteries. Every time I go to recycle at the local drop box, the box is full. That's a lot of bad, bad, bad chemicals and metals that won't go leaching into the soil. I do not understand why the push has been to green everything without understanding how much trash is left over when the use cycle is over... and, often, how much trash is CREATED when producing the item in the first place.
i can only bring some batteries to a shop for recycling. i use the box at b&h photo which is near the entrance but most shops you have to ask and then it becomes a get the manager situation. large items like an old cordless vac don't exactly fit in the box. the city runs a recycling day. one in manhattan per year! they didn't do it at all during the pandemic. i finally got to go last fall to union square park on the designated saturday morning with a shopping bag full of crap. there were lots of people doing the same thing as me. the workers were great and took the whole bag without question. why is it only once per year?
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.
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.
Unless you're getting the actual LMP price (as of this comment $.021/kwh) less your utility's cost to maintain and transmit that power, your neighbors are subsidizing those coal-fired, China slave-labor wafer made PV panels on the roof. Rooftop solar makes sense in, say, the UP, if I want to be fully disconnected from any utility. Outside of that, to run your lift and welders, AC at night or when its cloudy, the solar PV panels do nothing except raise your neighbors' rates.
The bulk of an energy bill is in the fixed generation and transmission capacity needed to serve load - not the gas/uranium/coal/wood/trash (er, renewable biomass)/oil burned to run the plant. Plants don't scale that quickly, and the incremental power provided by solar PV is the same as taking a dump on an airplane and thinking its now a lighter ship.
The power produced by solar often isn't needed and is like watering a lawn during a rainstorm, forcing dispatchable plants (those that can run without regard to the weather) to losses based on the crazy RTO market rules.
California doesn't use Gigawatts of unneeded solar every month of every year - even during days of their energy crisis - because energy is the quintessential real time commodity. Not to mention all the happy thoughts of mother Earth won't change the fact it gets dark, which is when the coal plants really start turning up the heat and grid demand begins to peak. Even a 100% solar grid in a perfect world where every day was sunny and cloudless, the inability to store any meaningful amount of grid-scale electricity requires the same or more amount of standby fossil or nuclear generation. The NBER determined 1.14 MW of fossil generation is required for every 1MW of renewable generation to ensure minimum grid reliability.
I could rant about this all day, but the renewable fantasies, subsidization, and tax incentives resulted in a massive misallocation of resources to China, emboldened Russia, and spiked inflation that easily could have secured energy independence for generations and a cleaner environment - I'm no greenie, however, I think most reasonable people wouldn't agree with turning the Cuyahoga River back into a flammable, orange, fetid sewer.
One only need to look at BASF's Q4 results delivered Friday, where they're essentially closing Germany to focus on areas with better energy policy. The irony of all of this is Germany went straight back to the dirtiest kind of coal to ensure it had power despite all its self-righteous green virtue signaling.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=49276
https://haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/WP314.pdf
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22454/w22454.pdf
I agree with everything you say. But the powers that be set up the rules that way and I'm going to take advantage of them.
I don't give a rip about climate change, but do hate spending money. When I went solar in 2015, the math was close to break even (negative if you consider the investment value of the cash), but I didn't want to ever worry about the cost of electricity again. Now I laugh when SDG&E announces a rate increase.
I dial the air conditioning down to where *I* want it, and if the lights are on when I leave the house I don't bother to turn them off. Since installing, I have only spent about $300 *total* in the last seven years.
Are the poor, the apartment and condo dwellers, and other "disadvantaged" persons burdened by subsidizing my net-zero solar metering? Probably. Do I feel guilty? No. Blue state California set up these rules and it's about time some of their policies tilted in favor of the taxpaying class.
...and by "taxpaying class" I mean those 10% of earners paying ~90% of all income taxes.
That’s the only rational thing to do. I don’t feel antipathy at all for those who have solar installs. I just think it’s important to be clear-eyed about what’s going on.
Dude, BASF is closing in Germany because the US fucking blew up Germany's gas pipeline to Russia. That is the only reason. We committed an act of war on Germany because we want them to buy our LNG or now Norway's and not Russia's cheaper gas.
Germany was making a slow transition away from fossil fuels, albeit I think with some bad decisions about nuclear in the short-mid term. Their problem right now is not that renewables aren't fully integrated, it is that 45% of their gas infrastructure was fucking blown up by us, their "ally" because they were getting cold feet (literally and figuratively) about our proxy war in Ukraine.
20 years ago the US ruled the solar panel business (Note that Germany also makes solar panels). The US, and here in the EU to a lesser degree, sold out our national/EU interests to allow big corporations to relocate their plants to China.
There is no reason why we couldn't keep those industries in the US AND keep regulations to protect people's water and air. It is a matter of political priorities. I know it is possible, as there is lots of heavy industry in Germany and here in Austria, and we have excellent air and water quality. The price is that big companies don't make the profits they do in the US, let alone in China. I live in a city of nearly 2,000,000 people, and 40% of our energy comes from renewables.
This is not a matter of "renewable fantasies" it is a matter of political corruption. Since Reagan convinced everyone that we are our own enemy - i.e. "government is the problem" the US has seen a transfer of $50 TRILLION dollars to the top 1% while US infrastructure has gone to shit. Turns out, when you give ultra rich people super low taxes, they spend that money buying politicians.
I could rant about this all day. The US of my youth in the 70s is gone. That kind of life does exist, but in countries like Austria where the rich can't completely buy the government. There are 8 billion people on this planet. We have to make some changes to how we generate power or we're going to die out a a species.
SIR, DO NOT SPREAD YOUR CONSPIRACY THEORIES HERE
SEYMOUR HERSH WAS RIGHT ABOUT MY LAI
SEYMOUR HERSH WAS RIGHT ABOUT ABU GHARIB
BUT HE JUST TOTALLY MADE THE NORD STREAM THING UP
BECAUSE HE IS NOT THE SAME SEYMOUR HERSH
ITS LIKE PAUL MCCARTNEY
WHO ALSO DIED IN 1968
I've never trusted Sy Hersh and I think he's been wrong a lot more than he's been right. He has to say something outrageous every now and then to keep his own name in the news.
True enough. That's obviously why Paul is barefoot on the cover of Abby Road.
There's some irony in the fact that Paul McCartney is alive and Russ Gibb, the DJ and promoter who publicized the "Paul is dead" thing, is dead.
The rich can buy the government anywhere they choose, to think otherwise is naive. It may actually be easier in ministerial governments.
The precipitous decline in American manufacturing accelerated over the edge when NAFTA was signed. The regularization of trade with China in 2000 was pretty much the final kick to the head.
Ross Perot was as right as any man has ever been.
I am turning into a PJ O’Rourke quote bot: “When senators and congressmen determine what is bought and sold, the first thing bought and sold are senators and congressmen.”
I agree fully with your last two paragraphs, particularly about Ross Perot. It must have really sucked for him to play the role of Cassandra while watching the Ds and Rs destroy the US middle class. To have so much wealth and influence and still not be able to steer the US economy away from the iceberg.
Regarding your first paragraph, you're right and wrong. Of course money influences every government. The degree of influence matters massively. After WWII Europe was literally and pyschologically destroyed. People who had been bitter enemies for hundreds of years came together after two massive world wars and agreed a system of cooperation would be better than continuing to wipe ourselves out every generation or two.
From those ashes a new social contract was created that has been eroded since the 90s, particularly in the UK, but still functions an order of magnitude or more than in the US. That is why the happiest people in the world will be found in these social democracies. Vienna, where I live for decades, was voted the best city to live in for about 10 years in a row until just recently. That is largely due to having a socialist mayor since the end of WWII.
One of the key factors in this happiness is limiting the amount of corporate capture and government corruption. Of course we have corrupt politicians. Very corrupt. But their corruption is about 2 orders of magnitude lower than the US, and that makes a huge difference in the day to day lives of populace, because politicians must still perform for the people, or they lose power. That has not been the case in the US for at least 20 years.
I bow to your experience in Austria. Ireland is the only European country with which I have extensive personal experience and it is a horror show.
Corrupt from top to bottom with a compliant press and state owned television and radio networks.
Even more than in the US there exists a yawning chasm between the rulers (Certain Dublin areas) and the ruled (everywhere else).
A National health service that’s in tatters, no housing for the native Irish, but plenty for “asylum-seekers” and refugees. The latter at least have a moral case, the asylum seekers are known mostly for tearing up and flushing their passports on the flight into Dublin.
A ridiculous energy policy that plants windmills all over rural Ireland and does very little for the grid.
Horrible entirely.
That could be Celtic efficiency and talent vs Teutonic.
Germany's secret sauce since WWII was trading manufactured goods made with cheap USSR, now Russian, commodities. With the wall up, Ostpolitik provided too many Marks for the USSR to screw it up.
Numerous sources document Russian penetration of German politics to shape the 'renewable' policies and positioning heavy dependence on natural gas as a clean, friendly 'bridge' to a solar-panel filled future, starting with former Chancellor Schroeder on the damn board of Rosneft. The same dynamics apply in the US - natural gas lobbyists love renewables because it only increases demand for their product. Fortunately, our gas comes mostly from within our own borders.
https://wapo.st/3ICWrel
And Russia likely influences the US' renewable policy. https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/596304-investigate-russias-covert-funding-of-us-anti-fossil-fuel-groups/
Regardless of who blew up Nord Stream, the fact that Germany was crippled by it proves my point - they voluntarily outsourced their most critical commodities to Russia and chose to do so with a hobbled military incapable of closing a hot dog stand. In the scramble for every molecule of natural gas, heat and electricity won out. Germany spent half a trillion euros last year subsidizing energy - that's a lot of money. France, on the other hand, did not because it's far less dependent on gas.
To your point about solar panels, China stole the IP, and worldwide consumers were happy to buy from the cheaper provider. China "makes" about 97% of solar panels - other countries may assemble them, but only China manufactures them. Polysilicon production requires hundreds of megawatts of power and China is happy to throw up unfiltered coal plants to serve that load with zero regard for environmental impacts.
Renewable fantasies are the definition of political corruption and exactly why Reagan, Eisenhower, and others warned about government. The laws of physics apply to all without regard to political beliefs, and a wind/solar grid defies the laws of physics. These renewable portfolio standards crammed down ratepayers throats do nothing but increase costs for the poor, and wealthy homeowners with rooftop solar arrays and subsidized $100,000 EVs benefit, e.g. https://epic.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Do-Renewable-Portfolio-Standards-Deliver.pdf
To your point about Austria's grid, while it's great on AVERAGE, 40% of energy comes from renewable resources, it's similar to me saying my house is an 'average' of 70 degrees because it's either 0 degrees or 140 degrees inside. Austria entirely depends on gas as its marginal power source to fill in the gaps, and the bulk of Austria's renewable power comes from hydro, not intermittent weather dependent renewables. An electric grid is a gigantic synchronized machine - being a tenth of a percent short on load serving power means frequency drops, equipment breaks, and you're dealing with rolling blackouts. No business can operate with that.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/AT (note how one country seems to always have lots of low carbon power - France).
The tradeoff to the money in US politics - at least in Germany - is you have utter morons like Habeck representing fringe parties with serious influence over policies instead of being relegated to an undesirable committee assignment. And a very large chunk of US energy policy is decided at the state level, or through regional transmission operators accountable to no one. We do get good decisions as well - Gov. Pritzker in Illinois deserves all the credit for ensuring its nuclear fleet remained operational and now its citizens are reaping the rewards in the form of meaningful credits on electricity bills.
You should see the damage that Eamon Ryan and the Green Party are doing to Ireland lately. Although, by the looks of it, you’re aware.
They shut down their domestic peat industry and now rely on thermal plants fueled by Polish coal for marginal power. Oh, and British nuclear power.
Where is Augustine O’Pinochet when he’s really needed?
I love it when people assert that we blew up Nordstream, as if the Russians don't have an -extensive- history of vandalising their own assets if they think it will gain them some sort of meaningful strategic advantage.
Forczyk's account of the North Caucasus campaign in 42' dives into this a bit.
I love it when people try to fit a square peg example from literally 80 years ago into the round hole of a completely different situation today:
1) If there was REALLY an extensive history of Russia doing this, you wouldn't have to reach back 80 friggin' years to find one now, would you?
2) In 1942 the USSR was in a direct battle with Germany destroying oil infrastructure so that Germany couldn't use it. The USSR also went behind German enemy lines to destroy weapons and ammo (the other example from 80 years ago I've heard on this same topic.) Both of those are completely different from the current situation. Or are you saying Ukraine was about to take over Nordstream I and II and Russia blew it up to keep the Ukrainians from getting it. THAT would be a round peg/round hole situation.
If Russia wanted a strategic advantage, they'd have blown up the Norwegian gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea that - what a coincidence! - started operation the day after the US blew up NS I and II. That would have given Europe no new LNG option except the 4x more expensive US gas. That would have been an act of war against Norway - which of course the NS I/II sabotage was as well, but unlike with NS I/II, Norway, Sweden, and Germany would not be sitting on their reports of who did it like they are now.
Sweden and Germany (not sure about Norway) have said they cannot release the findings of their reports for National Security reasons. Well, since Russia is NOT in a security alliance with either of those countries, I can see no argument that these countries could not say preliminary reports say it was Russia who blew up NS I/II without giving any details that would compromise "sources and methods."
Ok this is really cute.
My point is that you are projecting your 'logical' western mindset onto Russians who do not operate according to that paradigm.
The Russians operate according to the logic of their own culture which is informed by..... Guess what!? -Things that happened 80 fucking years ago- not even that, things that happened 100-200 years ago. This is how they beat Napoleon as well, by burning down their own fucking cities. So with this historical and cultural context in mind, are you really trying to tell me the Russians are above destroying one or two of their own pipelines?
Let's get into the Russian motives shall we? They know there isn't a snowballs chance in hell they can continue with business as usual after launching this bloodbath, so why not demolish those pipelines so they can spin the narrative that the West is at war with them? For the price of a few pipelines they have useful idiots like you and Hersh spinning this bullshit about how America has committed an act of war against Germany - This is exactly the sort of Active Measure the Russians have been perpetrating for the last 100 fucking years.
And no, Sweden and Germany are not going to release their findings, it isn't about them covering for the Americans, it's about protecting intelligence assets. They also don't want to 'escalate' the situation because the Europeans are clinging to the fantasy -still- that we are not at war with Russia, even after 100,000 Ukrainians have been slaughtered.
No, I'm not telling you it is impossible that Russia would destroy their own pipeline, I'm just telling you that in this instance it was 99.9999999% likely the US did it.
There was no tactical, strategic, or financial advantage to Russia blowing up their own pipeline, just the opposite. If they wanted to blow up a pipeline and pretend it wasn't them, they'd have blown up the Norwegian pipeline that opened up - just by coincidence - the day after the Russian pipeline was blown up.
Russia doesn't have to spin the narrative that the US is at war with them. We have enough people saying it directly. Like our demented president who said Putin cannot remain in power.
You're completely wrong about the possibility for "business as usual" to continue during the war. It was, and the Germans were getting cold feet about continuing. That is why the US blew up the fucking pipeline, to make sure Germany could not back out. The European populace overwhelmingly says they want the war to end.
There was a demonstration just a few days ago in Berline with 50,000 people saying Germany needs to get out of the war. There were 70,000 in Prague last fall, and about 10,000 here in Vienna, and Austria isn't even part of NATO. We got lucky with a mild winter this season for heating, but businesses are suffering massively with a lack of gas. Another 10 months of this will only make the situation here worse.
The Germans aren't stupid, just stuck between a rock and a hard place. They are vassals to the US but most people know that it was the US who blew up their pipeline.
The US is so pathetic in our lies about the bombing that we've concocted what I call the "Gilligan's Island" story. Some random Ukrainians on a three-hour tour of the Baltic sea somehow managed to slip by all the surveliance carrying tons of C4, dive to the bottom of the ocean and then blow up the pipelines, but they were so inept that they left their passports and explosive residue on boat. "Doh, GilliigAAAN!!"
And you say that Seymour Hersh's story is bullshit? LOL.
But there -is- a strategic reason for Russia to blow up that pipeline.
It is in their interest to make themselves look like the victim, as if this war was imposed on them rather than the opposite, which is the truth.
For now, the nuclear factor has kept escalation in check and has meant that the West is not directly fighting Russia on the battlefield, so for the Russians it makes sense for them to try and spin the narrative that the United States has committed and act of war against them, and this is a useful pretext for that.
So yes, it gives the Russians a useful strategic political edge on the world stage to pretend they are the ones who are the victims who have been attacked, it undermines support for Ukraine in the west, and bolsters support for Russia, which have material effects.
You do also know right, that NS has been put on hold the last 8 years since Russia originally invaded Ukraine? That was a sanction committed to even when the Germans were openly avoiding conflict with Russia, so now Russia has shown its true colours, it was never going to be possible to greenlight using NS, so it wasn't going to be business as usual even if NS wasn't blown up, and therefore destroying that asset for political gain would be an acceptable cost.
It doesn't matter that Sahra Wagenknecht can get 10,000 people on the streets of Berlin. This what is truly unforgivable about Germany's lack of support for Ukraine - leftists like her and the SPD leadership have spent the last 80 years lecturing the rest of Germany about their supposed 'guilt', yet the Ukrainians, who alongside the Poles and Jews are the biggest victims of Nazism are being left out to dry simply because these idiots don't understand their history, and believe that it is -Russia- who is the eternal victim of Hitler's fascism rather than the co-conspirators they actually are.
As for the attack itself, the Ukrainians managed to blow up the Crimean bridge, one of the most hardened targets in the Russian Federation, and Nemtsovs assassins penetrated one of the most heavily defended parts of Moscow, so no, Russian security is not what you think. I don't think the Ukrainians did it, but where there's a will, there's a way.
'The role of NATO is to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.'
- Hastings Ismay, first Secretary General of NATO.
One small disagreement. The Cuyahoga is a slow moving, meandering river whose curves catch a lot of debris, debris that has apparently been being ignited by lightning and burning since before Europeans arrived in North America. Not saying there wasn't industrial waste in the river but in my mind the burning Cuyahoga meme is a bit akin to the Saigon Execution photo of Eddie Adams. It doesn't tell the whole story.
Gold star comment here. This is the whole racket in a nutshell. Thank you for taking the time to write it.
Yeah, there's not much counter-argument to be made.
"It really works. It just doesn’t make a lot of economic sense — but neither does a swimming pool, and a lot of people have those."
Can't float around on solar panels enjoying a beer in summer. Maybe if cutting our carbon footprint was more fun more people would dig themselves deeper into debt to make it happen.
For sure -- but there are a LOT of people whose emotional relationship with "sustainability" and "the environment" is just as strong as the bizarre emotional relationship some people have with completely uncaring BRANDS like, for example, Porsche, or Rolex.
I don't know if I'd say a LOT of people...give people the choice between financing a Porsche and financing a solar system on their house and I suspect (based solely on my own jaded view of the world) that we'd see a lot more 911s on the road...maybe Taycan's because they want to feel better about their decision.
If we start seeing some IG influencers showing off their hot new solar panels then that attitude will probably change.
You probably don't know the right people. My brother--who is not a car person--used to get a huge kick out of driving his Prius, he claimed, because of the gas mileage. I don't know if this is still true. He hasn't talked about it in a handful of years. But I have friends like this. One friend, his wife owns a Jetta diesel, which I just love to drive, and so does she. The Jetta diesel's husband has a Hyundai Ironiq 5, which he seems to prefer driving over the Jetta, as strange as that seems to me. I drove an Iconic 5 once--at a car journalists' event on Bear Mountain in New York state, a location where if the car is at all fun, the driving is fun. But as you probably know, being a reader of Baruth, EVs have no personality, no matter how much torque they can muster, and the Ionic 5 can muster plenty.
I, on the other hand, am well versed in the importance of reducing CO2 emissions. I learned about global warming in a class at UC Berkeley in 1975, given by John Holdren, who ultimately became Pres O's Science Advisor. I've written a moderate amount about global warming. But I also know that I could drive my CO2 emissions down to the level of your average Bangladeshi without changing US emissions. In any case, you'd have to pry my cold dead hands off of the steering wheel and gear shift knob on my middle-aged Civic, by far my favorite material possession.
I'd argue that even non-car people would be swayed by a high-end sports car given the choice mostly based on the name recognition and the fact they can brag about owning a Porsche. That's based not on my circle of friends (who are engineers and would consider the long term cost of ownership of a Porsche versus a solar system) but on one, single data point: look at the number of YouTube subscribers that someone like Will Prowse has versus PewDiePie. Will Prowse reviews energy storage solutions and enjoys providing any information you'd need to add solar to your home. He has 807,000 subscribers. PewDiePie records himself playing video games and has 111 million subscribers. Based on this alone, I going to lean harder into my opinion that more people would chose a fancy car over solar.
Since you mention a Jetta diesel, I daily drive and autocross a Golf TDI while my wife's daily driver is an A3 TDI. The 2.0 common rail diesel in the mk6 Golf platform paired to their 6 speed manual is a god damned riot for commuting at speeds closer to legal and holds its own really well for autocross due to all that torque. My wife's A3 is a 2015 and is of the last generation of diesels that VW brought over before they got caught cheating. Hers has the 6 speed dual-clutch automatic and will spin the tires in the 1-2 shift when pulling away from a light. Can't say any of that about a Prius.
I'm disappointed that dieselgate happened partly because they were cheating emissions but mostly because they got caught and it killed small diesels here in the US. I feel like the small passenger diesel engines would be a perfect transition between gas engines and EVs during these transition years.
It’s not just here, diesels are going away all over the EU because of particulate emissions. This is the same EU that was all in on passenger diesels 20 years ago.
Mark my words, particulate pollution from tire wear is looming over the horizon.
We’ll all be Amish before long. Well not the people in Capital City of course, not them.
I share your disappointment.
If I had a dollar for every complaint about some group that got answered by "You just haven't met the right ones," I could buy and operate my own Carrier Strike Group for ten years.
There are plenty of these people in blue metro areas like SF, Seattle, LA, Boston, DC, etc, and I know a lot of them.
But I am NOT saying that there aren't plenty of people who'd rather have a fun car, like a Jetta TDI or a Cayman than an EV or a solar system, including myself.
But these H. sapiens brains are the most complicated devices in our solar system, and it should not be surprising that some people have preferences that others cannot fathom, and vice versa, and people do a lot of self sorting.
This is a good point -- the ONE WAY loyalty expressed by people is mysterious. I capitalize to emphasize how true it is. People desperately want to be part of something which will impress their peers. It may be bizarre, but it is also ubiquitous.
The economics of solar are a joke, which is why they still have to sell it via, tax breaks, cheesy YouTube ads, and sleazy hard sell tactics. It'll be awhile before I even think about....
WAIT A MINUTE, IS THAT A VOLKSWAGEN FOX!?! FUCK YOUR SOLAR PANELS, TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE VW!
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!
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.
It’s good to be eighteen in a high-trust society.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
This x100. Most homes are built like shit. Minimum code requirements for energy efficiency. Remember when houses used to have windows on all four sides for good cross ventilation? Remember whole house fans? It wouldn't be that difficult to reduce the AC load in the summer if we collectively held builders to a higher standard.
In America, spending more money on a house just gets you MORE house, not a BETTER house.
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.
My house is 110+ years old. I don't even want to know what it would cost me to fix the Windows. Heck, I should probably fix the front door that just leaks air first.
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.
I feel like you’re missing a 0 on those windows. I can afford 6k
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.
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/
My next door neighbor just spend $15,000 for putting new roof shingles on their house and related work. If solar panels were designed so that they could completely replace roof shingling, perhaps they might make more economic sense.
On a "behind the music" type show about the only MTV Cribs episode that anyone remembers, i.e. Redman's duplex, I learned that almost all of Cribs were just rented for the shoot. The crew was shocked when they showed up at his place and realized he had given them his actual address.
I'm currently looking at solar. It's probably going to cost me about 25K and that's after taking into account the government tax credit. Cash out of hand will most likely be over $35K.
With the tax credit I'm looking at about 12 to 13 years before I hit break even, on the assumption that electrical prices don't increase. The system I'm looking at is a between 10Kwh and 17Kwh. I use a LOT of electricity, about 30Kwh on an average day in the winter.
My house is heat/cooled by a heat pump. Propane is EXPENSIVE out here and getting out of the contract with Amerigas requires a lawyer (that I'm going to have to retain eventually).
I just had a new HVAC system put in (the one the house came with died hard at the ripe old age of 10yrs - previous owner must have figured he'd be dead before it died - and he was right). I've thought about using a ground source heatpump for heating the house (hint: Don't use them for AC, not a good idea) then at least I wouldn't have issues when it got down to freezing (which it's NOT supposed to do so often here in Texas).
The problem that all of us are really facing is that our government hates us, or they'd be building nuke plants all over the damn country and then electricity would go back to being 2 or 3 cents a Kwh.
One of those things that they don't teach you in school is that how advanced your society is, is based directly on how much excess energy your society generates. If you don't have cheap energy, you don't have a renaissance or a wealth of science, ideas, and progress. This country had cheap energy up until about 30 - 40 years ago and it's been downhill ever since. And it's our government that has been taking cheap energy away ever since the 70's. We have more oil than any other place in the world - yet we're not allowed to drill it. More uranium - but we're not allowed to use it. More Coal!!! - but we're not allowed to mine it (thanks Bill Clinton).
At least I'll probably be dead by the time the solar panels I'm buying start to fail (they only last 20 to 25 years). And for all of you saying that 'fusion is the answer!' - It isn't. If it ever becomes possible and profitable our government will ban it in 24 hours.
Nuclear for base load generation is really the only answer here in the US. Unfortunately, I don’t think that we as a society will be able to responsibly operate nuclear plants moving forward.
In a world where you have to hire by quota, and where the majority of "americans" are bound by moral systems and rules that would have been utterly alien to Nathaniel Hawthorne, any sort of nuclear power is a dangerous bet.
I expect planes to start falling out of the sky within twenty years, and bridges to be mostly theoretical in thirty.
Let's not forget that 737s were already falling out of the sky just a few years ago.
737s were being flown into the ground by incompetent pilots who were afraid to disconnect the automatic pitch trim and leave it disconnected. Boeing didn’t cover itself with glory, but my advice is to stay away from third world airlines.
Correct. A good friend of mine is a Delta pilot and indicated to me that pretty much any american trained pilot would not have had an issue correcting it. He also has echoed for years to stay away from third world airlines.
Joy Reid has a Harvard degree. Think about that, but then Pete Buttigieg went to Harvard *and* Oxford and look at his stellar record.
How soon before lots of folks die because of woke med schools?
Frankly, it's the rejection of empiricism that worries me most, the "ways of knowledge", the "lived experience". Perhaps the intent is to make it all subjective
People have to stand up and call out the bullshit for what it is.
As a Jew I'm pretty aware of what it's like to live as a minority, sometimes hated, sometimes in a hostile uberkultur, but hard work and meritocracy are not white, gentile value. They're institutionalized and normalizing patronizing behavior.
And crashing into each other on the tarmac in five.
There have been two or three very near misses in the past couple of weeks. One at JFK and one at Austin.
In the 70's and before the pilots of the fedex jet would have beat the air controller to death after they landed.
Oh, we can responsibly operate them. We've only been doing so for 60+ years.
It's just that the feds won't let us do it anymore.
Or the democrats.
They also do not teach how many problems go away with cheap-enough energy.
"The problem that all of us are really facing is that our government hates us, or they'd be building nuke plants all over the damn country and then electricity would go back to being 2 or 3 cents a Kwh. . . . . . This country had cheap energy up until about 30 - 40 years ago and it's been downhill ever since."
This corresponds with the Three Mile Island incident, and subsequent increase of regulation of the nuclear power industry. The advent of fracking gave us a period of low cost natural gas causing in part the withdrawal of several nuclear power plant permits.
Interesting facts: "All of the used nuclear fuel produced by the U.S. nuclear energy industry over the last 60 years could fit on a football field at a depth of less than 10 yards.", "The U.S. generates about 2,000 metric tons of spent fuel each year . . . avoiding more than 400 million metrics tons of carbon dioxide emissions", and "More than 90% of its potential energy still remains in the fuel, even after five years of operation in a reactor. - US Department of Energy.
WRT U.S. nuclear waste: the Simpsons, and others, showing nuclear waste as huge quantities of big barrels full with glowing goo is stuck in the mind for many. The reality is much less exciting as the spent rods don't take up much space, but try convincing people that what they know is wrong.
Very true, but it has to be acknowledged that the low-level waste is much bulkier. Rags, tools, supplies that have been used in the containment vessel all need long-term storage too.
Thinking about the nuclear Boy Scout disposing his clothes every time he went in his shed and wondering if this is true.
Sounds like it’s not ages long storage:
https://www.nrc.gov/waste/low-level-waste.html for most of it And that low level is fairly broad In scope.
..."Titled “The Sky’s the Limit,” it begins by declaring that “solar and wind potential is far higher than that of fossil fuels and can meet global energy demand many times over.” Taken by itself, that’s not a very bold claim: scientists have long noted that the sun directs more energy to the Earth in an hour than humans use in a year. But, until very recently, it was too expensive to capture that power. That’s what has shifted—and so quickly and so dramatically that most of the world’s politicians are now living on a different planet than the one we actually inhabit. On the actual Earth, circa 2021, the report reads, “with current technology and in a subset of available locations we can capture at least 6,700 PWh p.a. [petawatt-hours per year] from solar and wind, which is more than 100 times global energy demand.” And this will not require covering the globe with solar arrays: “The land required for solar panels alone to provide all global energy is 450,000 km2, 0.3% of the global land area of 149 million km2. That is less than the land required for fossil fuels today, which in the US alone is 126,000 km2, 1.3% of the country.” These are the kinds of numbers that reshape your understanding of the future.
We haven’t yet fully grasped this potential because it’s happened so fast. In 2015, zero per cent of solar’s technical potential was economically viable—the small number of solar panels that existed at that time had to be heavily subsidized. But prices for solar energy have collapsed so fast over the past three years that sixty per cent of that potential is already economically viable. And, because costs continue to slide with every quarter, solar energy will be cheaper than fossil fuels almost everywhere on the planet by the decade’s end. (It’s a delicious historical irony that this evolution took place, entirely by coincidence, during the Administration of Donald Trump, even as he ranted about how solar wasn’t “strong enough” and was “very, very expensive.”) The Carbon Tracker report, co-written by Kingsmill Bond, is full of fascinating points, including how renewable energy is the biggest gift of all for some of the poorest nations, including in Africa, where solar potential outweighs current energy use by a factor of more than a thousand. Only a few countries—Singapore, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and a handful of European countries—are “stretched” in their ability to rely on renewables, because they both use a lot of energy and have little unoccupied land. In these terms, Germany is in the third-worst position, and the fact that it is nonetheless one of the world’s leaders in renewable energy should be a powerful signal: “If the Germans can find solutions, then so can everyone else.”"
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/renewable-energy-is-suddenly-startlingly-cheap
tinyurl.com/CheapSolar420x420sqmilesworld
Today, at 10 am EST, the plurality of Germany’s electricity is being generated by burning coal. In second place is gas, then solar, next is burning biomass, followed by wind.
There’s a free app called Electricity Maps that shows the carbon intensity for many of the grids around the world. It’s very interesting.
I’d very much recommend reading Shorting the Grid by Meredith Angwin. She’s someone who is concerned about Global Warming, but has a realistic, cold-eyed appraisal of renewables.
It can’t hurt to get another perspective.
What would make a GSHP not a good idea for AC? It's extremely common now for whole homes to be heated here in Canada with just mini splits. Their CoP is 2 to 3 whereas a GSHP is easily in the 4 to 6 range. With any electric heat source I'd highly recommend a whole home backup generator and ideally propane backup heat. 30kw-h would be a low average around here. We average, in the winter, in a large home, 90kw-h a day with a ground source heat pump and a garage mini split.
The problem with using a GSP for cooling your house is that the pipes in the ground start to bake the ground. This will over time make the ground pull away from the pipes, or get harder, and it will lower the efficiency of the heat pump.
I don't think it'd be an issue in an adequately sized system. If that were the case my pipes would be frozen and it'd cost a lot more than $10 a day to heat a 4800sf home and 900sf garage in 10 degree weather.
Fusion isn't happening. Since 1943 it's remained 50 years in the future, and there it still remains. The most interesting article I've read was about a huge experimental reactor in France, that's being constructed by multiple countries. It's obvious from the article that the author is highly intrigued by fusion, and wants it to work. It's also obvious that it's far too complicated--too vulnerable to Murphy's law--to ever work.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/03/a-star-in-a-bottle
Since it seems like a lot of people here care about this, I'd strongly encourage all to:
- if you live in a state (like Michigan) with renewable portfolio standards, write your statehouse legislators
- when your utility files a rate case, make comments! It's your right - show up at the public hearings, question assumptions, point out that renewable-driven higher electric bills mean fewer teachers in classrooms, higher water/sewer bills, etc. Ask where the solar panels come from, whether they're made with forced labor, and how the utility (that collects the lucrative tax credits only to dump them as Duke, AEP, and others recently did). Why are they forcing you to buy this stuff?
- Support initiatives to preserve nuclear plants - carbon free with the highest capacity factor by a mile
- Oppose net metering subsidies
- Call out hypocritical "REC" shell games
Learn more about this as I believe energy constraints and the instability they cause will be the defining feature of the next decade - Pakistan today applied for IMF money directly caused by EU nations driving gas prices sky high.
"Shorting the Grid" by Meredith Angwin is a great book that most libraries have, as is Decouple Podcast.
https://www.decouplemedia.org/
PJM , the ISO for much of the mid-Atlantic, just stated that fossil plants are being retired without any adequate planned replacement.
There’s going to be an awful lot of screaming when natural gas starts going up again.
"he’s no longer driving an ITR and an Elise, which has to incur some sort of spiritual cost in and of itself, right?"
Exactly, he basicly gave away his "car enthusiast card" to make the numbers work.
I don’t have big answers to the big questions. I am but a simple, minimalist man.
When it comes to energy I try to be like my grandparents. Minimal lighting, heating and cooling while taking advantage of passive sunlight and wind.
Except gasoline.
I burn a lot of fuck!ng gasoline!
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
here in nyc, everything is upside down. until about ten years ago, when they finally installed meters, i paid no utilities. it was just built into the rent. i was charged an extra $120 per year for each ac unit. the building had cogen steam heat. the steam is created from waste heat at the con-edison electricity plants and piped in. they've been doing that since long before green was a thing. my building stopped using the steam because it's cheaper to burn fossil fuels so they installed a gigantic furnace about ten years ago. i kid you not. i'm still not charged for my gas stove (but gov hochul wants to make gas stoves illegal).
other fun facts. water is not metered. the building pays a flat rate based on the number of units. they have collection for my food scraps so we can save the world with compost but no collection of old rechargeable batteries. they mostly end up in the landfill poisoning the ground water. the craziness goes on and on...
It is absolute insanity that places moved away from using waste heat. While I don't care for steam heat, it does work well and that waste has to go somewhere... why not use it? It's akin to having a heater core in a car.
It also is absolutely stupid that many, many recycling places will not take things such as GLASS or BATTERIES. Am I crazy in thinking glass was incredibly easy to recycle? Like, we did it pre-aluminum all the things. And, you're totally right about batteries. Every time I go to recycle at the local drop box, the box is full. That's a lot of bad, bad, bad chemicals and metals that won't go leaching into the soil. I do not understand why the push has been to green everything without understanding how much trash is left over when the use cycle is over... and, often, how much trash is CREATED when producing the item in the first place.
i can only bring some batteries to a shop for recycling. i use the box at b&h photo which is near the entrance but most shops you have to ask and then it becomes a get the manager situation. large items like an old cordless vac don't exactly fit in the box. the city runs a recycling day. one in manhattan per year! they didn't do it at all during the pandemic. i finally got to go last fall to union square park on the designated saturday morning with a shopping bag full of crap. there were lots of people doing the same thing as me. the workers were great and took the whole bag without question. why is it only once per year?
So what you mean is solar would be in favor, only if your electricity costs were sufficiently high.
Well that can be arranged....
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/
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.
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.
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.