Posted on 07/19/2024 8:39:24 AM PDT by Blueflag
Some food for thought about Pres Trump's speech, customer service, and planning for contingencies.
1. Last night during his speech Pres Trump pointed out that so far $6.1M had been raised for the three affected families. He also pulled out a physical check (not a personal check) for $1M. He said softly "thanks Dan." I *do* wonder if the Dan of that donation is Dan Bongino. Dan's there at the RNC; he's a personal friend-acquaintance of Mr. Trump with access; and this is the kind of thing Dan can now do due to his success.
2. For years I have used an Eotech holographic sight on my squirrel gun. It's man versus wild for me to keep the squirrels from harvesting more apples from my orchard than I do, and I've needed a good 10 - 60 yd sight on the .22LR firearm. It's one of those .22s that looks like an AR platform rifle with a mag well - even has Picatinny rails. But underneath all that makeup, it's just a Plinkster. Well three weeks ago it suddenly became a CHS rifle. I was missing every shot. So ... of course I blamed the tool instead of me and checked the zero. Turns out it was shooting 6" high at 25 yds. OK, no big deal I thought. Maybe I whacked the sight handling the rifle and it needed re-aligning. I started trying to drop the elevation on the Eotech and no matter how I turned the elevation knob, the elevation never adjusted. As most shooters are aware Eotech caught (deservedly) some bad press from our warfighters about losing zero while deployed. Afghanistan is not a good place from which to call customer service. ANYWAYS they stepped up and did a great job of taking care of folks with FUBAR holographics. Now it was my turn is seemed. My sight was 12 years old - WAAAAY out of warranty, but Eotech rep informed me that for $80 they'd fix or replace my sight, and ship it back to me at no other cost. All I had to do was ship my old one to them at my expense. Deal.
The good news is that exactly three weeks after shipping my sight off by UPS I received a *new* Eotech holographic (same form factor as the original but clearly not my antique) by UPS. Can't wait to set it up and sight it in. This the praise for Eotech. I love the sight picture and the lack of paralax in Eotech. Makes target acquisition simple. Kudos to Eotech for the outstanding service.
3. We've owned a plug-in hybrid (Fusion Energi) since the spring of 2015. With all the hub-bub and nonsense around the EV push, I just want to reinforce the logic and utility of a plug-in hybrid. (a) my wife has a 12 mile round-trip commute. She is able to do that 100% on the 'big' battery. So we get the daily benefit of a no-gas-needed EV. (b) this AM she's working from home and I had to run errands so I took her car. Understand that where we live in N Ga it's quite hilly at times. After all one of the roads on the way to Publix and Home Depot is called 7 Mile Hill. A plug-in hybrid works off it's 'big' battery as an EV until that battery is discharged, OR the load (like climbing a long steep hill) exceeds the power output of the battery. Then the motor runs and the car runs like an everyday hybrid. On my 36 mile round trip this AM - which meant using up the 'big' battery and then operating as a hybrid - I got 175 mpg. Gotta love that. With a plug-in hybrid ya get the benefits of an EV with ZERO range anxiety, and after 14 years, we still don't need a new battery. Sure it's degraded some, but to me it the THE BEST overall design for a commuter-run around vehicle. Of course Ford has discontinued the model ... PS - it gets about 47-49 mpg on long trips. So redirect your 'hate' for EVs to a love for plug-in hybrids. ;-)
4. This AM we all awakened to the news that Microsoft and Cloudstrike had sh!t the bed for millions of users. My wife's laptop and her company were severely affected. She drove to the office to give her laptop to the swamped IT guys and as mentioned above, is now 'working' from home. Well this item is actually about the value and utility of keeping adequate cash in your home. Let's suppose this outage (deliberate or stupidity?) had affected LOTS and LOTS of businesses to the point where the retail, banking, point-of-sale, logistics, utility, healthcare etc industries were severely degraded. Well then cash is king. This AM as I headed off to Publix and Home Depot, I went to our safe and 'withdrew' cash sufficient for our needs, just in case. Turns out it wasn't needed, but ya never know. NET: I recommend that you accumulate and safely store adequate cash on hand for the contingencies you plan for. It'll give you a measure of peace of mind.
 Hey! FReepers! Help Fill The Tank! How About It? Huh? It Ain't Askin' Too Much Ya Know.... Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
1. Last night during his speech Pres Trump pointed out that so far $6.1M had been raised for the three affected families. He also pulled out a physical check (not a personal check) for $1M. He said softly "thanks Dan." I *do* wonder if the Dan of that donation is Dan Bongino. Dan's there at the RNC; he's a personal friend-acquaintance of Mr. Trump with access; and this is the kind of thing Dan can now do due to his success.
2. For years I have used an Eotech holographic sight on my squirrel gun. It's man versus wild for me to keep the squirrels from harvesting more apples from my orchard than I do, and I've needed a good 10 - 60 yd sight on the .22LR firearm. It's one of those .22s that looks like an AR platform rifle with a mag well - even has Picatinny rails. But underneath all that makeup, it's just a Plinkster. Well three weeks ago it suddenly became a CHS rifle. I was missing every shot. So ... of course I blamed the tool instead of me and checked the zero. Turns out it was shooting 6" high at 25 yds. OK, no big deal I thought. Maybe I whacked the sight handling the rifle and it needed re-aligning. I started trying to drop the elevation on the Eotech and no matter how I turned the elevation knob, the elevation never adjusted. As most shooters are aware Eotech caught (deservedly) some bad press from our warfighters about losing zero while deployed. Afghanistan is not a good place from which to call customer service. ANYWAYS they stepped up and did a great job of taking care of folks with FUBAR holographics. Now it was my turn is seemed. My sight was 12 years old - WAAAAY out of warranty, but Eotech rep informed me that for $80 they'd fix or replace my sight, and ship it back to me at no other cost. All I had to do was ship my old one to them at my expense. Deal.
The good news is that exactly three weeks after shipping my sight off by UPS I received a *new* Eotech holographic (same form factor as the original but clearly not my antique) by UPS. Can't wait to set it up and sight it in. This the praise for Eotech. I love the sight picture and the lack of paralax in Eotech. Makes target acquisition simple. Kudos to Eotech for the outstanding service.
3. We've owned a plug-in hybrid (Fusion Energi) since the spring of 2015. With all the hub-bub and nonsense around the EV push, I just want to reinforce the logic and utility of a plug-in hybrid. (a) my wife has a 12 mile round-trip commute. She is able to do that 100% on the 'big' battery. So we get the daily benefit of a no-gas-needed EV. (b) this AM she's working from home and I had to run errands so I took her car. Understand that where we live in N Ga it's quite hilly at times. After all one of the roads on the way to Publix and Home Depot is called 7 Mile Hill. A plug-in hybrid works off it's 'big' battery as an EV until that battery is discharged, OR the load (like climbing a long steep hill) exceeds the power output of the battery. Then the motor runs and the car runs like an everyday hybrid. On my 36 mile round trip this AM - which meant using up the 'big' battery and then operating as a hybrid - I got 175 mpg. Gotta love that. With a plug-in hybrid ya get the benefits of an EV with ZERO range anxiety, and after 14 years, we still don't need a new battery. Sure it's degraded some, but to me it the THE BEST overall design for a commuter-run around vehicle. Of course Ford has discontinued the model ... PS - it gets about 47-49 mpg on long trips. So redirect your 'hate' for EVs to a love for plug-in hybrids. ;-)
4. This AM we all awakened to the news that Microsoft and Cloudstrike had sh!t the bed for millions of users. My wife's laptop and her company were severely affected. She drove to the office to give her laptop to the swamped IT guys and as mentioned above, is now 'working' from home. Well this item is actually about the value and utility of keeping adequate cash in your home. Let's suppose this outage (deliberate or stupidity?) had affected LOTS and LOTS of businesses to the point where the retail, banking, point-of-sale, logistics, utility, healthcare etc industries were severely degraded. Well then cash is king. This AM as I headed off to Publix and Home Depot, I went to our safe and 'withdrew' cash sufficient for our needs, just in case. Turns out it wasn't needed, but ya never know. NET: I recommend that you accumulate and safely store adequate cash on hand for the contingencies you plan for. It'll give you a measure of peace of mind.
I love Eotech. Turned a very average shot group for the M-16 and M-4 to a near Expert shot group, even out to the 300 meter line.
And we used the night vision capability to separate friend from foe, we all had a certain type of UV in our pakul and we could clearly see who was who in the zoo.
The million came from Dan Newlin. Trump said his name. Newlin is a Florida lawyer.
Thanks - I missed that. Appreciate it.
Wear your pakul around town here at home and ya might get some looks. ;-)
What’s going on? Suddenly everyone thing FR is a site for them to post vanities? Did I miss a memo?
This posted in general chit-chat ya know. ;-)
One of the reasons we went with a full EV (BEV) instead of a hybrid is because my wife and I have two cars and I wanted to diversify our dependency on energy type. Thus, if the Dims mess up our access to one energy type, we'll take the car that depends on the available energy type. So, if the Dims make a gasoline shortage or make gas too expensive (IMHO gas is expensive now), we'll take the BEV car. If the Dims make the grid undependable or too expensive to use, we'll take the gas pickup. As you pointed out the range of power alone in a PHEV hybrid, using that for long trips would be impossible if we had to depend on just power.
I'm not in any way criticizing people who get a hybrid EV or no EV at all. I'm just saying that's my strategy for a two-car couple.
Of course, the other reason I went with a BEV is because of home solar. We drive on average 40 miles per day local driving (in the past 12 months, 15,500 of our miles were charged at home). As you said, a PHEV can handle most local driving days with power alone. But with the BEV getting about 250 miles range on 80% charge, I can have a few days in a row of low solar (rainy days) without having to charge the BEV. That allows me to usually wait until a good sunny day to charge the BEV without having to charge from the grid. Thus, doing most of our driving in the BEV instead of a hybrid or our ICE pickup is part of why in the past 366 days, 82% of the power we've consumed in our home (including charging) came from homemade power, only 18% had to be pulled from the grid.
That doesn't make our home and local driving 100% energy independent, allowing me to disconnect from the grid. But it does allow my financial planning into retirement not worry nearly as much about runaway energy price inflation form the Dims' warmageddon cult policies.
The Dems are going to screw up the grid and petroleum fuels, both.
A top reason to vote them out.
Do you not have net metering? I do and it makes no difference (to my electric bill) when I consume electricity.
I (we) could track with you about 99% going forward. We’ll most likely replace the Fusion Energi with a BEV (likely an extended range Ford Mach E Premium). ‘My’ vehicle is an ICE Eco-boost F-150 with extended range fuel tanks. It’ll easily go 600 miles one tank on a road trip, which is longer than our bladders will go. The THIRD car is the Porsche Cayman (my wife’s toy). We’re set. I am retired and she will be next summer. The family (nuclear and extended) all live within 40 minutes so a BEV is a no-brainer for us.
We are a solar home as well, although we were limited to a 10 kW system by Ga law so we only get about 70-75% of our usage covered by solar. But like you this means only ~25% of our energy usage is subject to inflation. Truth be told we could alter our behavior and reduce consumption from the grid. I plan to add more battery capacity to the solar system - to 20 kWh to improve off-grid utility.
LASTLY, we have a monthly-tested propane-or-gas generator and a 300 gal propane tank as a tertiary power source. We’re pretty well set on energy flexibility for the exactly the same reasons as you. SO kudos to us, eh? ;-)
We have net metering but (laughs out loud) it is MONTHLY net metering, and the utility gives you only a $.07/kWh credit for the electricity they sell at $.14-.16/kWh. One May when we were traveling and not at home we made $2.00 back on the bill. We never planned for cost recovery with our system. PArt of the reason we can’t “make money” on solar is that the utility charges a $30/mo meter fee. So FIRST we gotta make up that $30 and THEN try to get to net MONTHLY metering on kWh. Ain’t gonna happen and we knew that going in.
Solar provides resilience if the grid goes down and allows us to largely avoid the costs of inflation on electricity. ~70-75% of our power is ‘free’ - generated by solar. As we both know solar isn’t free, but it is fixed cost.
Alabama does not have net metering. For the past 10 months I've been selling power to the grid to try it out. The amount my bill is reduced by selling power is increased by about that much with the extra fees that come with the privilege of selling power. So on the 1 year anniversary of selling power I'll crunch the numbers and see if I should just turn the grid sell feature back off like I had it the first 2 years of solar.
When I said that I pull only 18% from the grid over the past year, I meant exactly that. In last month's bill, my inverters showed that I consumed 2,149.9 kWh during that billing period. Both the power bill and my inverters say that I pulled only 27 kWh from the grid. Thus, 98.7% of the power we consumed was homemade power. My power utility doesn't know about the other 2,072.9 of the kWh I consumed last month because it all stayed in house and was neither pushed to the grid nor pulled from the gird. The power utility knows only about the 27 kWh I pulled from the grid, and the 695 kWh I exported to the grid (power I sold). Because we don't have net metering, even with such a huge disparity like that I haven't had a power bill with a credit (saying they owe me). This is because of not just the extra fees I pay just to sell power to the grid, but also because the rate I make per kWh is about 1/5th as much as the rate I pay per kWh. The main thing to me, though is the 2,072 kWh that the grid never knew about because my inverters "hid" all of that power from the grid.
Of course, that is for a summer month when solar is great in Alabama. Over the past 366 days, of the 21,618 kWh our home and EV charging consumed, the power utility never knew about 17,702 kWh of it (81.9%). The power utility "saw" only the 3,916 kWh I pulled from the grid and the 3,294 kWh I exported to the grid.
Thus, my inverters are configured to prioritize incoming solar power to 1) power my load first (my electrical panels), then if there's excess 2) charge my batteries, only if they're fully charged do I 3) sell the excess to the grid. And during the time of day that it's charging my batteries, if my batteries get to at least 55% charged (configurable), then my inverters will power a special electrical panel that one of my EV charger circuits is tied to. The idea is that if the home batteries are charged at least 50%, then I probably have enough battery power to power the home through the night without using the grid. So at that point I'll start using some of the excess solar power to charge the EV further. Basically, at that point in the day I'm charging the EV while still charging the home solar batteries. If the home battery charge level drops to 50% or below (configurable), the inverters will quit powering the extra electrical panel and I'll quit charging the EV (the idea being to save home battery power to use that for powering the home through the night).
Our floor charge level for the EV charge/range is usually 50%. That's usually well more range than we need to drive the next day's chores. But if today's a good solar day I'll charge the EV all the way up to 80% to have enough charge for the next few days (and also have enough home battery charge to power the home through the night). That'll reduce the odds that I'll have to charge the EV from the grid in the near future on rainy days. By having the main EV charger we used powered intermittently in this fashion, only when I have more power that our home needs, we optimize the savings of having both solar and an EV without having to watch the weather and run out to the garage to plug and unplug the EV manually. Of course, if my EV charge is low enough to charge whether or not the power is free, I'll charge it with the other EV charger (the charging circuit that's tied to the normal electrical panel that's always powered).
End result: the solar system's efficiency combined with the EV's efficiency work better together than the sum of their parts. Only 18% of our power has to be pulled from the grid, most of that during the 4 "winter" months November - February. My past 12 power bills averaged $82.77. And that's for an all-electric 2,300 sq ft house, and doing most of our driving in the EV (we drove it 23K miles in the past 12 months, with 15,500 of those miles charged at home with homemade power).
For us, the first $15.60 (including the 4% tax) per month are flat monthly fees. And I get back only 2.91¢ to 4.52¢ per kWh when I sell (depending on the time of year and the time of day). That compares to the 15.6¢ to 16.1¢ per kWh we pay for power we pull from the grid.
And for the privilege of selling power I have to pay extra fees that total of $1.96 per month in two flat fees combined, plus a demand charge like businesses pay. In my case, the demand charge is $35.88 per month (because for a brief period in January I pulled 23kW from the grid, and that factor is used for 12 months' worth of statements, since the calculation looks at the highest demand in the past 12 months).
Thus, in my case the choice to start selling power to the grid last September means paying $37.84 in extra fees with the hope that my grid sell credit is at least that much. So far there are some months that my grid sell credit is a little over that, while during the winter months it's not nearly as much to "break even". On the 1-year anniversary I'll look at the numbers. If I don't like them I'll turn off my inverters' grid-sell feature and cancel my grid-sell contract with the utility. I'll go back to being a normal customer like everybody else with the normal bill plan, only pulling a lot less power than most people.
Always good to hear from another solar customer who ‘gets it.’
And the way the utility can control you is with the grid-sell. So buy equipment that has the ability to turn off grid-sell if the regulations change to not being in your favor. If you don't put power onto the grid, it's not the utility's business whether or not you have solar to reduce how much you pull from the grid. Or another way to say it, it's not in the utilities sight how much power you use if a lot of the power you use is homemade power (not pulled from the grid).
Good advice!
” I *do* wonder if the Dan of that donation is Dan Bongino. “
It wasn’t. Now you can stop wondering.
Yeah, it was Dan Newlin.
In case you were wondering 🤔
This solution given would work out well for some, but how many ordinary people (especially retirees) can do something that would require that much money. As for me it is my situation that I can only afford One car & it is a reliable gasoline powered vehicle. I can’t say if an EV would be any cheaper to run as this car is good on gas and highway capable too. I have no idea how much charging costs for an EV would be for similar use. Doesn’t matter as I can’t afford an EV & a used one would be a fool’s errand in my opinion.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.