Posted on 01/09/2023 1:59:02 PM PST by fruser1
I smell another sweet heart deal involving investors in electric utilities and appliances.
Sounds like the homes are poorly ventilated.
What did this bogus Green Energy BS company say about children wearing masks for hours on end, day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out?
That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard of. An average burner puts out about 7000 BTU cranked up on high. That is minuscule. It only takes 0.061403509 gallons of gasoline to achieve that. We are talking mere thimbles of natural gas to heat that much. Where do they get these people? These idiots are why we have that moron Polis for a governor. I miss the Colorado we had before the invasion.
Asthma my asth!
Bs, this is hit piece to bolster their attsmpt to ban gas stoves. Biden has zero autority to do that, btw.
If they were serious about asthma they’d ban cigarettes. Government makes too much money off cigs to do that.
I bet the homes that the children live in have mayonnaise in the refrigerator. Need to crack down on mayonnaise.
What about snowy, cloudy weather?
Not much snow here in north central Alabama. But we do have some rain and clouds. That's part of it providing 80% to 90% of my power on average through the year. The idea is not to give me 100% of my power, that would be cost prohibitive. So I don't have to have a system that accounts for every scenario perfectly.
The idea is to win most of the big battles (read: days I consume the most power I need to do that almost or completely free). I don't have to win most of the small battles (read: the days I consume little power). In other words, if I make most of the power I need on hot summer days when I run the A/C a lot (my variable speed heat pump) I achieve much of what I need to achieve from winning that battle alone. Most of the days it's really hot turn out to be really sunny (read: I have lots of free power on the days I run the A/C a lot). Since I'm now all electric my 2nd largest battle is heating the home during the winter. The really cold winter days ("really cold" for Alabama LOL) tend to also be sunny days (read: get lots of free power during the day to charge my batteries to make it through the night or almost through the night with free power before pulling from the grid until morning).
For the most part, the cloudy and rainy days tend to be mild temperature days and, thus, I don't need lots of power to run the A/C or heat. I get some solar power on those days too, even if it's not much. Sometimes on those days it's not enough to power the house without pulling from the grid. But that's okay, I can "lose" the battle on those days because I don't need much power anyway on those days. Those days add little to my annual power costs anyway.
Spare panels & parts?
My solar panels have a 25-year warranty guaranteed to have only a gradual decline in throughput to still be producing 70% on the 25th year. My batteries have a 19-year/50% warranty.
One thing I'm hopeful for is the fact that there are no moving parts, thus nothing to get worn out quickly. Literally the only moving parts are the fans in my inverters (10 year warranty).
To me, there are other pieces to this large project, such as the cost to replace my A/C and gas furnace with a variable speed heat pump with variable speed air handler (both of which have moving parts). Likewise I replaced my natural gas water heater with a hybrid water heater (which also has moving parts since we usually run it in efficiency mode which uses its built in heat pump to heat the water tank from the heat of the surrounding air). But other things don't have moving parts (i.e. the air duct I installed above the water heater to duct in hot air from the attic into the water heater's air intake to give it free hot air as a plentiful heat source for most of the year). The same for other wise energy improvements everybody should make regardless of solar (more insulation all over the house, seal caulking cracks around windows, etc.). Those aren't moving parts I expect to wear out in the near future.
The other piece of the puzzle is that I bought an EV since I was about to have to replace my wife's old ICE crossover car anyway. The EV is obviously a lot of "moving parts" (read: chance of breakdown). But it has a 7-year/100K mile "drive train" (they don't call it that with EV's) warranty. Like the solar system, the EV doesn't have to provide 100% of our driving needs since we still have my ICE pickup. By doing most of our driving in the EV, though, it helps us win most of the battle with the cost of gasoline even if we can't completely avoid the cost of gasoline (sometimes we drive my ICE pickup).
The entire project should pay for itself about 10 or 11 years. That assumes a 3% inflation rate on both the costs the project protects me from: i.e. most of the power costs, most of the gasoline cost (but with charging the EV adding to some of the power cost), all of the natural gas costs (but with some added to power consumption to offset the old nat gas appliances being replaced with electric ones), oil changes, having to replace my wife's used ICE car with another used ICE car in 7 years like we've done on average, etc. This calculation also assumes a 3% inflation rate on my new costs: i.e. when I have to replace the EV's battery 10 years from now, the cost to charge the EV when we take it on trips, the cost for the power I still have to buy from my power utility include some more for charging the EV, etc. My payback calculation also accounts for the interest on the HELOC I took out to pay for almost all of the solar and such, and the car payment (a somewhat new thing for us since my wife and I have driven nothing but old used ICE cars for many years, but old used ICE cars also were part of our budget from us each month transferring a "car payment" to our car savings account to pay for the next used ICE car).
As of right now, the energy project financer in me "owes" the retirement savings financer in me $2,500. That's how much more I've so far pulled from my retirement investments (in May of 2021 when I installed the first part of the solar system, plus August of 2022 when I added onto it after studying the throughput for a year and also added charging equipment costs) to pay for what my HELOC didn't pay. But minus the energy savings each month since I started the project. Around October of this year the project will have saved my retirement savings more than it cost my retirement savings (less I have to pull from retirement savings to pay my energy costs, including the HELOC payment + car payment, but minus all the yuge power bills and natural gas bills and costs at the pump I was paying that would keep gong up). I'll still have 2 and 3/4ths years left to pay on the car payment, and still have a large HELOC balance to pay off. But with my old energy budget and car savings allowance making those payments plus my tiny power bills, with the excess to pay down extra on the HELOC to pay it off earlier after the EV is paid off, on about the 12th year the HELOC will be paid off (including what I take out of it to replace the EV's battery in 10 years), my retirement savings will be $68K richer by avoiding most of the ever increasing energy costs over those years, and I'll own some paid for solar equipment and an EV both of which should have years of use left to help me avoid the Dims' sky high energy policies (even with my solar equipment and EV will be slowly degrading in throughput).
That's me thinking like a soon-to-be-retired software engineer who every now and then wishes I went into financial planning. LOL
Of interest. Read me:
https://eidhealth.org/analysis-multnomah-county-gas-stove-report/
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abe74c
RMI is one of multiple organizations running point in the ongoing assault against natural gas, etc.
Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado,
air is thin, small minds have a hard time functioning under this, now we have to guess they have a small mind or an empty head
Too bad all science and their studies are now based in political scientism.
Great perspective and planning.
But I’m always leery about “warranty” from solar companies, considering all that have come and gone.
Living in a condo, I can’t deploy the hardware you have, but I have some liberals living in the 40-unit complex that I can burn for warmth. Heh.
I am “prepped” w/ food, water, TP, ammo, firearms, cooking and water purification gear etc for 2yrs.
I went with these companies for that reason. Sol-Ark (started 10 years ago by army veterans), Mission Solar (started 9 years ago). Hopefully those are old enough to prove stability as can be expected from solar companies. I thought a lot about getting LG solar panels for that very reason of being a stable enough company to honor a warranty. But opted instead to go with the oldest companies I could find that made their products in the U.S.
Second hand smoke absolutely causes reactions in people... that’s not a hoax. Asthma, Coughing, other reactions... trying to claim natural gas stoves are equivalent? Nonsense.
Yes there are not great things that happen when you burn things, but trying to sell natural gas to be on par with smoking particulates in childhood asthma is nonsense.
geez, here we go again.
Good idea; I hope it works long-term for you.
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