Posted on 06/20/2026 2:48:23 AM PDT by knarf
I'm not smart enough to analyze this correctly, but most of my house is operating low voltage items . . . TV's, lap tops and a ton of smaller lights and stuff that all have those little black boxes for plugs.
Thank you for the excellent descriptions.
My house has two 200 amp breaker panels from a 400 amp service. I’m slowly decreasing my bill from outrageous to painful.
Air conditioning is the bulk of it, even with two new energy efficient units.
I have many horse & buggy Amish clients who have no electric in their houses or barns. It’s no wonder that most of them are swimming in cash.
Ummmmm - the AC is converted to DC for those items - without it, you would be going through a ton (literally) of batteries. Imagine changing your laptop/phone/and other items’ batteries out every couple days.
There you go, spot on.!
If you got fine desktop computer, fast with lots of power, big video card, I'm old so I got a big screen monitor that I can see. So, with just this I'm probably pulling around 600 watts. (?)
You need to start responding to some posts and clarifying things because this thread is getting all kinds of weird responses.
“”””My house has two 200 amp breaker panels from a 400 amp service. “”””
Lucky you, my old house has 60 amp service and while it was built for propane and electric I only have electric now which means that I have to keep track of usage, which can come up during winter with space heaters and the 120 volt water heater running at the same time. I’m looking forward to possibly going to 100 amp at some point.
No. Tesla wanted to deliver tbrough the air. That’s *only* possible with AC. If you want to understand the Tesla vs. Edison arguments you have to see what Tesla and Edison actually said, not someone writing a book making ridiculous claims to sell the book says.
If your question is why AC instead of DC, that’s one question. If it’s why am I paying for 220V when I use almost only 12V or 5V that is another question, but related.
Let me answer *that* one first. Because whether it’s AC or DC the absolutely undeniable fact is that the amount of energy lost in the transmission line is proportional to the amount of current in the line. Send 100A down the line and you’re losing energy much faster than if you send 1A down the line. But the same relationship doesn’t hold for voltage.
So if you’re energy needs are 100 Joules (1V at 1A for 1second = 1J) they can send it to you at 1V and 100A or they can send it to you at 100V and 1A. If either arrives at your house the total energy is 100 J. But if they sent it at 1V the energy *losses* along the way would have been massively *higher*. They have to charge you for how much they have to send you, not how much you get, so how do you want it sent? The answer (within my example) is 100V at 1A if you want you bill to be lower.
Now, what they *really* do it send it at the highest voltage they possibly can (to get the current, amps, to as low as possible) for as far as they can to reduce losses. That’s the huge transmission towers. Then at some point not *too* far away from you they step that voltage down quite a bit to a few thousand volts to distribute between neighborhoods, then transformers take it down to 220V in the neighborhood to send into houses.
That’s why it ends up in your house as you describe.
Now, the other question... transforming between voltages for AC is easy, cheap, and highly efficient. THAT’S why we use AC for energy transmission. Transforming voltages from AC to DC is inefficient and transforming voltages from DC to another DC voltage is even more inefficient yet.
That’s why AC.
And as far as Tesla goes, transmitting power through the air requires *way* higher frequencies (radio) and is *way* less efficient. Tesla thought we could have essentially infinite power generation so assumed it didn’t matter. He was wrong. And for everyone bitching about cell tower radiation, that’s how you’d be getting your power - but at way,way, way higher powers if Tesla got his way.
Tesla was just wrong. Let it go.
You have 220V coming into your house across two phases. Most lines in your hour house are wired across one of the phases and ground. Your washer or dryer is wired across both phases to get 220V.
Yeah, and why do I have to pay money to the Internal Revenue Service, when I live near the border?
What I’m going to let go of is you.
I haven’t run into the 220 volt washing machines.
End result: to date the project has saved my cash flow a net $7,500 more than it cost me. The monthly payment I make on the loan plus small power bill is less than what a normal power bill plus natural gas bill plus gasoline costs would be. I specifically engineered $850/month in power bill plus loan payment, what my energy costs plus car savings was in year 2019. That was the last Trump year before Covid distorted energy prices. Now that the EV is paid off my $850/month (minus power bill) is quickly paying off the loan, and saving my cash flow a lot. So the entire time, my budget has felt like it’s year 2019 without the last 7 years of inflation (at least the energy and transportation part of my budget). As the loan is paid down the minimum payment goes down, but I pay extra on the principal (again, my power bill plus loan payment always equals $850).
And when I say that it saves my cash flow, what that means is more money staying in our Roth IRA’s growing tax free. But I intentionally ignore that in my calculations as a way to add a little pessimism.
No one should try to replicate what I did unless he’s willing to do his homework like he’s a project engineer. I’m not talking about calculus. But I am talking about micro details.
The electrical grid supplies AC. Your devices convert AC to DC.
We put in all new efficiency windows and doors. No change in bills.
“No change in bills.”
Posting the figures from a recent bill and an older bill of the same calendar month might make things clearer.
“Base load affected facilities that follow the CCS pathway must meet a second phase standard based on 90% capture of CO2, using CCS, by 2035”
“Baseload affected facilities that follow the low-GHG hydrogen pathway must meet a second phase standard based on co-firing 30% low-GHG hydrogen by volume by 2032 and a third phase standard based on cofiring 96% by volume low-GHG hydrogen by 2038”
In all seriousness, think about the analysis that bureaucrats do to figure out which seemingly minor regulations to tweak to work to their favor at our expense. They do it in a way that slow boils us so we don’t know to jump out of the water until it’s too late. My version of prepping is not against the Max Max apocalypse scenario that other peppers are ready for, a situation that I don’t think will happen. I’m prepping against the slow boil that erodes my financial planning for retirement. It also can be a spiritual warfare planning as the left slowly but steadily increases the pressure to bow to their hedonistic, doomsday, baby killing, God denying, racial bitterness cult. And they’ve made it clear that energy regulations are some of their favorite weapons.
“Air conditioning is the bulk of it, even with two new energy efficient units.”
My neighbors to the west had their attic blown-foam insulated.
When I redo my roof, I will put a solar-powered attic fan on the roof.
Basically DC cannot travel far without being degraded by the very wiring that is carrying it. AC can travel thousands of miles.
Edison wanted DC, Tesla wanted AC.
If Edison had won out, there would be a power generating plant on every block.............
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