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

Not really sure if that's in response to me or not...

If it is then the simple answer is I have a fairly large house and I never intended it to be the "typical off-grid house". This is a modern house with all manner of modern stuff. I use between 600W and 1000W per hour most hours, a little more if things all come on at the same time or something. My current battery stack simply can't handle anywhere near that much (it really couldn't even when it was new, much less so now that the batts have been damaged and inadvertently abused). My next battery stack will be able to power me for three days if I don't get much or any sunlight which will more than handle all but the darkest stretches.

LED bulbs will only get you so far--you've still got well pumps and microwave ovens and circulation pumps that will do their thing from time to time. Even the Grundfos pumps (which are what I have) still use power.

Ferret

One of the first things I did once we moved in was to ban all electric space heaters--they all went to the ARC. As you say they're immense draws and will take a battery stack down faster than nearly anything.

Now, since then I've relented slightly and picked up a couple of small (200W) heaters off of Amazon for my mother. Even though she keeps her apartment area at Bermuda-like levels (~85 degrees F) she still can get cold when she first gets up on a winter morning, so one of these under her blanket over the easy chair does wonders. But that's basically my only concession there.

I did also move all of my computing to a laptop but that was mostly because the desktop died and I've decided to redo my computer room (basically a third story tower room). But by the time I have that up and running I'll have the new battery stack and won't be as worried about it.

Ferret

You're quite welcome!

Question for you--do you find that the well pump is basically your single largest power draw (when it kicks on)? It's astonishing to me. Fortunately I have an 80 gallon water tank so it doesn't run often, but still it's a huge draw.

Ferret

Small family (just my mother). I built her her own apartment at the opposite end of the house, divided from the main house by the garage. I wanted her to be as independent as possible.

Ferret

Wow that's amazing! He actually gets enough methane to do this? Remarkable.....I definitely envy him on that.

My batteries are a quite frustrating situation. My solar guy (who really did mean well) just plain undersized the system. To make it worse he knew I didn't want to bother with ongoing maintenance, so he selected Gel batteries for the system. Gel batteries are quite fine but meant more for things like remote towers and the like, with little deep discharge. Given that my system was heavily discharging it only took a year or so to see a definite degradation of their capacity.

The next batts will be AGM (Absorbed Glass Mat). These also don't require any maintenance but are both more forgiving of the occasional deep discharge and not subject to overcharge (which in Gel batts causes big burned "bubbles" in the Gel).

Your brother is doing remarkably I dare say. I'd have a lot of trouble with bears if I did that, but it's working for him and that's awesome! Tell him he's got a fan here in Colorado!

Ferret