Over the thousands of years that climate changes enough to make this happen, yes.

Ferret

No, you're comparing highly-overpriced lithium-ion batteries to the low-ball-not-making-a-cent Tesla price.

Show me an actual chart of actual renewable system batteries and then you've got something. Until then you don't.

Ferret

Electric cars have limited range and some have problems in cold weather.

I can easily see a lot of folks having tried it and then...ah well, it was a noble experiment.

Ferret

You said "inexpensive". You didn't say "one time expense".

That said, you're basically arguing with the wrong person. As I said I'm 100% off-grid, love it totally, and wouldn't change it for the world. But it's not cheap, and that's what the original post was alleging to a degree I thought was too much.

FYI panels last around 20-ish years or so nowadays. They used to degrade roughly 1% a year but the newer ones don't....closer to .25% or so (haven't had mine long enough to really tell any difference at all).

No way I'd use a refurbished battery, but to each his own there.

Ferret

I honestly don't know why you're being hostile....please explain how I'm to tell one AC from another?

As to answering an AC but thinking the conversation has gone too far without greater identification, you'll note I did engage the AC. Since I can't tell if further posts are him/her or if multiple people are involved I figured that was the end of it.

I did in fact explain precisely what my reasoning was (this is the post http://hardware.slashdot.org/c... if you need help). To my mind the question as asked and answered.

Really, the onus is on or more of the ACs to either say "thank you" for my explaining or to engage in further discussion. I would request the courtesy of an actual user ID however if they wish to continue.

Ferret

I note I'm speaking to an AC in an AC thread here...but what the heck.

The original post did indeed read very much as if the OP was fobbing off most of the problems and costs to other people. This might not be what he/she intended of course, but he/she hasn't jumped back in to defend them either. I'm afraid I interpreted them virtually the same as the AC I agreed with did.

Having now had at least two and possibly three ACs in this conversation, I must insist on actual names for further conversation....

Ferret

This is true...my walls are 13" thick without the exterior covering and the house is quite cool in summertime. I've occassionally had to turn on the overhead fan but that's it.

On the other hand most houses are not sporting walls that thick, so that's a very long term solution.

Ferret

Not sure how you get from nationalizing energy production to exploring space....?

In either event if you knew anything about Cold War history you'd know that the Russians primarily operated their space program as a way to shake out various engineering issues for their ballistic missiles--putting a person into space was just a nice touch and gave them bonus propaganda points. And to further push a bit nobody said government couldn't do some things well, just that they generally can't do them as well as private industry.

But that's off the subject, which was privatiziation vs. nationalization of power production. How do you avoid the obvious lessons learned over the past few decades that point against such nationalisation? Are you saying it would work here in the United States for same reason where it hasn't in other places? What specifically makes you think that?

Do you include companies such as Solar City and what Elon Musk is doing with his Tesla power packs for the home in this nationalization? Why or why not?

Ferret

Please define "not that expensive".

Eight of these for example would run you just about $3000 (I chose 8 to get you to a 48V system, the common configuration for off-grid systems these days). I include shipping but not the wiring and interconnects and such to make them work for you:

http://www.wholesalesolar.com/...

A lead-acid system shouldn't be discharged more than around 20% in order to avoid longer term damage; you can discharge them more deeply but you'll shorten their life significantly:

http://www.solar-electric.com/... of Batteries

Scroll down to the "Cycles vs. Lifespan" section and click on that chart. It's amazing.

So if you are likely to use half of your storage (~225AH for those selected) then a single set of batts would be discharged 50% in normal use. At that rate the batts will last you around 1000 charge/discharge cycles, so a bit less than 3 years if it's every day. If you want them to only be discharged 75% (moves you up the lifetime curve to 2000 charge/discharge cycles or around 5.8 years) it'll cost you double the price above, or around $6K. And quite honestly 225AH is a very shallow system....we're not talking about much being on overnight here. You definitely couldn't consider running a microwave--you'd tap that puppy right out.

I'm leaving out the equipment costs and such; charge controllers to dump power into the batteries and an inverter to take power out will add around $5K more.

I love the idea of as many folks as possible having back up and/or being off-grid entirely (I am) but it ain't cheap. I did it because I had no other choice here; the house is 5 miles away from the nearest power line.

Ferret

Good interpretations sir.

Ferret

Um, I think you mean nationalized in this context. You want it to be owned by the government for the "general good", whereas privatizing it would mean it was run for a profit.

I disagree completely of course--it was nationalized in the Soviet Union and it is nationalized in places like Venezuala and Cuba. Power don't work so good there.

Ferret

Good post; thank you. I think many who champion renewables don't understand the issues involved in spinning up/shutting down the big power plants, and what that means for grid stability.

I'd tend to agree that we want to see more smaller scale power plants and I think we will over time, though it's going to be difficult. The industry has spent a lot of time and effort consolidating everything into larger facilities mostly out of sight, so to move smaller facilities out into the suburbs runs into all kinds of problems. You'll have the NIMBY folks of course no matter what kind of plant it is. There will be infrastructure rebuilds and re-routes that will disrupt people and cause their own set of problems. A big solar field will probably have less opposition generally, but of course those require a lot of room--which can be hard to find near a suburb.

Concur completely about going LED where it's possible. I live 100% off-grid and so watch every watt that the house uses like a hawk. Recently I just swapped out all of my halogen track lights to LEDs, dropping energy use (if they were all on at once) from 2000W to 320W--an amazing difference. These track lights were the last remaining "hard" lights to replace as they're a GU-10 form factor and there aren't a lot of that size LEDs out there.

Now I can focus on the rest of the house with more "conventional" bulbs. Everything else in the house is CFL; there are 255 lights in all inside and I've managed to covert 125 of those to LED so far. It'll be a project I probably won't finish for a year (LEDs are pricey) but when I'm done I'll use a lot less power for my lighting.

Small steps!

Ferret

Just...go away.

Ferret

Nah, I must admit this is a pretty good sized house.

I'd lived in tiny houses my whole life; when the time came to build I'd decided I wasn't going to do that again.

Ferret