"How Ford’s Electric Pickup Can Power Your House for 10 Days"
Posted on 06/06/2022 4:19:17 AM PDT by MtnClimber
South Africa is destroying its electrical power system in the name of "renewables."
South Africa -- supposedly one of Africa’s advanced economies -- is reeling under severe power shortages and daily rolling blackouts -- some for as long as eight hours.
In May, most households, commercial buildings, and industries experienced hours of blackouts. The South African state-run power utility ESKOM supplied no power between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. due to a “loss of generation capacity.”
Last month, social unrest was reported in parts of the country after frustrated citizens took to the streets to protest power failures, cable theft, and years of inefficiency at Eskom.
The utility has been notorious for corruption, poor maintenance, and failure to increase generation capacity.
Reports indicate that “South Africa is poised for 101 days of power outages this year.” In 2021, only 65 days had power outages. But the current situation is only set to get worse, thanks to a woke climate agenda that Eskom and the South African government have embraced.
According to the 2019 Integrated Resource Plan, 24,100 megawatts of conventional thermal power sources (mainly coal) will be decommissioned by 2050 and be replaced with renewable technology.
As a part of the plan to reduce reliance on conventional energy sources, South Africa is likely to accept money from a climate fund offered by a consortium of countries. Bloomberg reported, “The arrangement (climate fund) would enable Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. to access the $8.5 billion pledged by the U.S., U.K., Germany, France and the European Union… The company wants to use the money to fund the closing of some coal-fired power plants and the construction of renewable-energy facilities to replace them.”
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The left seems to enjoy creating human suffering. Why do people vote for them?
Look at the political change that occurred in South Africa and you have your answer.
Apartheid was a terrible policy that needed to be removed, but the result has been the demise of South Africa as a nation. Communist ideas and government confiscation of land because the owner is white, etc.
“Why do people vote for them?”
Maybe they don’t. I think it was Stalin that said. To paraphrase, “It doesn’t matter who votes as long as we count the votes”.
81 million votes?
If South Africa was so concerned about their power grid they wouldn't have allowed race riots to break out last year which destroyed up to 40% of their electrical capacity.
If those power poles become useless for energy then the people could use them as gallows for their rotten leaders.
"How Ford’s Electric Pickup Can Power Your House for 10 Days"
“South Africa: Warmism creates blackouts”
coming soon to a country near you: the evil results of the Luddite religion of “climate change” espoused by the ignorant and evil fascist Democrats ...
It has been going on for years. Probably getting worse. They call it LOAD SHARING.
“How Ford’s Electric Pickup Can Power Your House for 10 Days”
As you may know, I’m not exactly a huge cheerleader for electric vehicles, but there is something to say regarding this truck.
First, get the BS out of the way. If 131 kWh was enough to power a house for 10 days, then 400 kWh would be enough to power a house for a month. That would mean electric bills on the order of $40 to $50 a month for your house. Sorry, that aint the case. So, a reasonable number is perhaps 4 days of power without AC (or electric heating) and 1.5 days if those systems are running. Still nothing to sneeze at, as that is a lot of energy and far more than Tesla’s PowerWall.
This is where it does get interesting - the cost for this entire truck is FAR LESS than the cost of an equivalent number of PowerWalls (or similar systems). So, yea, I could understand buying this truck as a backup to grid or solar power (maybe 2 or 3 of them), and with the bonus of having something to take to the store and buy groceries. And, in fact, Tesla FORBIDS using their vehicles as a backup power source.
So this truck provides is far more usefulness than most electric cars, whose only practical purpose is to give the owner a way to hold his nose up at others while virtue signaling.
“supposedly one of Africa’s advanced economies — is reeling under severe power shortages and daily rolling blackouts — some for as long as eight hours”
Coming to America this summer?
“would enable Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. to access the $8.5 billion pledged by the U.S., U.K., Germany, France and the European Union…”
The commies in this country are not satisfied just to destroy our electrical infrastructure. They are using our money to pay corrupt companies to destroy it in other countries.
As a gas-guzzling F150 owner, I’ve gotta say, the Lightening is interesting to me. But prices would have to come down some to make it affordable for me. There’s also the novelty in being able to power our house with the truck’s battery, but that capability just increases the price of the already unaffordable (for me) price. Plus...I couldn’t comfortably park this beauty in our garage, for fear of fire. I say all of this as a previous Prius owner (actually the wife’s car). We had the Prius for 10-11 years and then gave it to one of our kids because they were temporarily down a vehicle. It was a great little roller skate...I miss it.
How DARE you own a hybrid and post here!!! Just kidding, I think hybrids are great and will likely be my next purchase. A friend of mine has the same story with his Prius, very impressive by Toyota to do so well with what was a brand new technology.
Agree on the fire hazard. At some point, after gasoline car production is fully outlawed, we’ll be told to never park an EV in a garage - backed up with an insurance exclusion. Gonna be fun in winter for all of those virtue signallers.
We used 416 KWH last month, which is about average for us, paying $98 in northern NH.
We have heated most of our hot water with solar for the last 40 years or so.
We hang out some of our laundry to dry.
We have an induction stove, which has the instant control, even better than gas, and uses about 15% less electricity over a resistance stove.
Charge all of our rechargeable power tools, lawn mower, chain saw batteries, etc., with solar from on our U1300L Unimog.
Solar makes sense for individual households and companies.
Grid tying solar, in most cases is insane, usually dumping power into the grid in off peak times.
It makes sense in central Vermont as there is a large foundry that draws a lot of current in the daytime, one of the few logical places to grid tie it.
Even that doesn't work well on cloudy days or when snow covers the panels.
You get little, if any power then from the panels.
I don’t deny it’s doable, as I’ve met that number, in the summer, in Texas (my family was out of town, of course, and I was trying to see what I could withstand).
But the claim is not qualified, so any average Joe reading that will think he’s safe for 10 days, when that’s a very hard target to reach without some serious effort.
Of course that's also in May, which is a good month in Alabama (lots of sun, mild temperature).
I looked into a solar water heater but chose to go instead with a hybrid water heater (electric water heater but when in efficiency mode it uses as built-in heat pump to heat the water tank). I hoped to take advantage of its cool air by-product to help cool the living quarters of my house and save on A/C, but that worked too well (created a cold dead spot near the water heater that was so cold it was uncomfortable). So I duct the cool air up into the attic, and while I was at it I made a duct to bring hot air from the attic into the water heater. So I have nice free heat from the attic as the heat source for the water heater. (Another problem with a solar water heater is that it would have taken up space on my roof -- the one place on my property above the tree line, which I wanted for my power generating solar panels.)
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