Posted on 04/29/2024 4:50:00 AM PDT by MtnClimber
“Batteries are better then ever. Way back in the good old days, a top shelf car battery had an 18 month warranty.
The 12 volt system was introduced in 1956 - then new high compression engines, AC, power accessories, meant the 6 volt electric system couldn’t keep up, especially with generator charging systems.
Modern cars and trucks have all that stuff and more. Security systems, satellite comms, all sorts of parasitic drains. Check the voltage after a few days and they are depleted. There is enough juice to reliably start the engine - but the battery will be toast in just a fraction of its potential service life.
Yep, very well explained. The trick with lead acid batteries is never let them get below 10.5 volts or let them sit down on charge too long and they will last much longer. We lived off grid for quite awhile, and with proper maintenance and “rotation” in the bank our cheap common 12v marine deep cycle batteries would last at least 4 years. Something about the slow discharge and slow recharge from wind and solar actually helped the life expectancy vs the fast discharge and fast recharge from vehicles.
I agree 100% with part of the sentiment (reducing demand is part of the math) but not the other part (changing lifestyle).
Part of my energy project was doing things to make our home operate way more efficiently (sealed cracks, replaced old gaskets around doors, added insulation, installed a variable speed heat pump, hybrid water heater and directing the cold air byproduct from the water heater to my HVAC during the warm half of the year). Since it was time to replace my wife's ICE crossover anyway I replaced it with an EV crossover, choosing one that has a good miles/kWh throughput. And I set up two charging circuits (one constantly powered and one intermittently powered) to optimize charging the EV with mostly homemade power. About the only thing left to make the home more efficient would be to take down the sheetrock on all the walls so I could put real insulation in the walls. But that's cost prohibitive now that my power bills average $80/month in my all-electric, 2,300 sq ft home and charging the EV to drive 1,300 miles per month (with homemade power charged miles, not counting if we take it on road trips).
Rule #1 before I began this project engineering task was that mine and my wife's lifestyle wouldn't be limited. We'd still get in the hot tub as much as we want. We'd still keep the home temperature set to what we want. We'd still drive as much as we want (now that we do most of the driving in the EV, our driving habits are related to our solar throughput). So our lifestyles aren't changed.
What's changed is that the Dims' stupid energy polices and their warmageddon cult impact our monthly budget only about 20% as much as they used to. My small power bill + loan payment I took out to do the solar and other upgrades is equal in my budget to what my year 2019 budget was paying in power + natural gas + gasoline. In other words, I've removed the past 5 years' worth of dumb energy price inflation from my budget. As the loan balance is paid down the monthly payment amount goes down too -- but I still pay the same amount to pay it down early (again, freezing the energy cost portion of my budget like it's forever year 2019).
When the loan is paid off I'll probably still "pay" the same amount to an investment account to build up for repairs to the solar system or appliances. (What I'll probably do instead is just withdraw that much less from our Roth IRA's but designate that portion to being for the home energy project. That way a higher percentage of our wealth stays in our Roth IRAs growing tax free.)
“bought them 3 years old and had nothing but issues.”
It would be difficult to make an accurate generalization about battery chemistry based on the performance of second hand year old batts, how do you know for sure they weren’t abused, neglected, permanently sulfated etc?
I think this is all very good information for personal use. But what are we going to do about industry?
I saw someone say that people used to live with no electricity at all and managed just fine.
Are we going to go back to outhouses too? And are we going to have to grow all of our own food, instead of having it grown somewhere else (with no petroleum-based fertilizers of course)
And no money to buy products ranging from nails to fasten a board to a wristwatch to keep track of time, never cars. We don’t need cars, right? Horse and buggy?
And when you get sick, old, or infirm, you are on your own?
Do we really want to go back to those times? I think this is great for individuals. Are we really advocating for a return to pre-industrial times?
True, as long as you do the math on your situation (power consumption habits, weather patterns in your area, etc.). Not everybody can make solar work well enough to pay for itself.
But what are we going to do about industry?
On that we're in 100% agreement. See post #12 where I use my own experience with home energy self reliance (a successful project if being 80% self-reliant is the goal) and discuss how being 100% self-reliant is not at all feasible. Then doing that on a city-wide, industrial scale is horrible. And especially outside a climate that's not good for solar (i.e. northeast U.S. or northwest U.S. vs warm sunny Alabama).
I figured that was the case that we agreed on that.
If we destroy industry and transportation, there are going to be a lot of people with no heat, no food, no water, and things are going to go South very quickly.
I can only conclude this is all by deliberate design, the goal.
3 banks for me is 42kw
With BMS about $9k
Plus time to build
Some people just look like wankers. Faith is one of them.
What I meant was exactly the opposite of what you are striving to do. You will find that it will be a full time job just to try and keep up with this lifestyle you want from a self sustainable system. The more money you throw at it, the bigger it gets, the more maintenance it will need. Been there... It ends up being like trying to maintain six cars instead of just two when your true needs are satisfied just fine with only two.
To be practical and sustainable it first takes a lifestyle adjustment in the mind. Beginning with impractical ideology and expectations from the system. Beginning with size of dwelling you need to heat and cool and luxury toys. I am approaching the concept from a general perspective that not everyone has a half million dollars to set up a system just to try and satisfy an impractical and exuberant lifestyle.
I mean really... Is a 4000 square foot home for one person or even a couple actually practical? Or is it just a status symbol to show off wealth? How many rooms can one occupy at one time? Same with luxury toys... Are they really a hill to die on that one cannot live without? Or just status symbols that put an unnecessary demand on the system? Or just conveniences to satisfy laziness?
Anyone can become self sustainable and do it affordably if they adopt and practice a little minimalism, effort, and practicality rather than try to maintain status symbols and laziness.
A couple of issues I wondered about are: Do we have enough raw materials that we would need to make this many Lithium-ion batteries? Aren’t they the ones that are used in vehicles...the ones that occasionally catch fire?
“I think this is all very good information for personal use. But what are we going to do about industry?
I saw someone say that people used to live with no electricity at all and managed just fine.
Are we going to go back to outhouses too? And are we going to have to grow all of our own food, instead of having it grown somewhere else (with no petroleum-based fertilizers of course)
And no money to buy products ranging from nails to fasten a board to a wristwatch to keep track of time, never cars. We don’t need cars, right? Horse and buggy?
And when you get sick, old, or infirm, you are on your own?
Do we really want to go back to those times? I think this is great for individuals. Are we really advocating for a return to pre-industrial times?”
Of course we would rather not. But unfortunately this is indeed our future. We will be thrown back into the 1800s where communities have their ranchers, farmers, butchers, bakers, and candle stick makers. With a little advantage of some personal electricity for minimal needs such as lights. So we can get caught with our pants down or get ahead of the inevitable and do it on our terms now not on their terms later.
An outhouse is actually a luxury in a survival situation. Been there too. And yes, it is going to come to this pretty soon the way it is going. Of course we don’t want to return to those times but we are not going to have a choice. They are pushing it on us by the day. They are making us dependent on the grid so they can shut it off completely. And yes unfortunately it will indeed become a time where only the strongest will survive. That is exactly their plan...
Unfortunately the choice will be live minimal and practical or be homeless.
I don’t know what the reserves are for lithium, but I think most are controlled by China. I doubt there is enough lithium to make backup storage for the entire world. Recycling lithium batteries is difficult, so there needs to be improvement in technology in that area too.
“Do we really want to go back to those times? I think this is great for individuals. Are we really advocating for a return to pre-industrial times?”
Think third world... Because that is exactly where we are headed very soon.
You are right, most batteries last longer and perform better with gentle charging and discharging cycles. The converse is also true. Constant rapid charging of EV batteries is detrimental to their lifespan and performance. This is often overlooked as one of the costs of an EV. This contributes to the abysmal trade in value of EV’s. When you factor that in to an EV’s expense, It becomes insanely expensive compared to ICE powered vehicles.
And as a reminder, my "only" 80% energy self-reliance includes our driving (charging the EV for 1,300 miles of local driving per month with homemade power). Most people who talk about being off-grid solar still buy gas for all of their local driving, even if it's a lot less than 1,300 miles per month.
To your point, if our political class puts us in a mark-of-the-beast style situation for energy I could go 100% with a change in lifestyle (i.e. closing off the downstairs of the house, getting in the hot tub only on good solar days, less joy riding in the EV and less getting my mother out of the nursing home for 100-mile round trips visiting family and such, just getting out for necessities, etc.).
His thesis is flawed.
Being “smart” implies intellegence at a higher level.
The problem is not intellegence but rather ignorance. One can be ignorant, lack information, but still be intelligent. That is a serious problem on Free Republic where intelligent folk are simply clueless when international subjects are discussed.
The author does allude to the ignorance cause however.
The solution will ultimately be many small and safe nuclear power plants
I have been playing with salt batteries on a small scale. I am currently moving back off grid and want to build a large six cell salt battery to try and store my power. Even though they take up three times the space as other batteries, they have a huge advantage of endless discharge/recharge cycles without losing efficiency. They can also be made more efficient by adding Hydrogen Peroxide. The only real draw back is the cathodes and anodes are sacrificial and need to be replaced once in awhile as a regular maintenance item. But using graphite anodes greatly helps with this issue.
If we get to that point it is going to be mass starvation.
If we can’t get food to markets, and people don’t have money to buy that food, that is exactly what is going to happen.
I don’t think that is hyperbolic. People don’t realize how close we are to that in this country of 330 million people. They won’t be able to grow food.
Personal electricity consumption is going to be the least of anyone’s worries. It is going to be food and potable water.
So why arent people out there talking about the upcoming mass starvation and horrorshow that the leftists are bringing on our country and in all of western civ
Why arent we talking out loud about the death that is soon coming. Writing articles, speaking at venues,
“To your point, if our political class puts us in a mark-of-the-beast style situation for energy I could go 100% with a change in lifestyle (i.e. closing off the downstairs of the house, getting in the hot tub only on good solar days, less joy riding in the EV and less getting my mother out of the nursing home for 100-mile round trips visiting family and such, just getting out for necessities, etc.).”
Unfortunately this is what will happen and what will be required. You will get by then as long as you are willing to actually reduce demand when the time calls for it.
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