WE ARE STILL IMPORTING 595,000 RUSSIAN OIL BARRELS PER DAY

Pacific Pundit ^ | February 23, 2022

[T.B. Yoits]

We should have nothing to do with those nations that are against us.

...like China, Germany, Mexico, Kanada, and parts of the United States?

...let's also include the Ukraine for such entities as Burisma that own Jao Bai-din, Hunter Biden, Nanzi Pelosi, Paul Pelosi, John Kerry, John Kerry Jr., and Christopher Heinz (Kerry).

[JayAr36]

WE ARE STILL IMPORTING 595,000 RUSSIAN OIL BARRELS PER DAY

Thanks to our idiots in the District of Corruption.

[MercyFlush]

“Spoken like a good Democrat.”

Hey, my first choice is to have Trump back in office but I have to live in the real world and right now we have a potato in the White House. I’m just glad that the sanctions are ratcheting up on Russia instead of just the laughable and meaningless half-measures that we saw after 2014.

Frankly, I expected the Biden team to fold and surrender Ukraine to a gangster just to keep gas and oil prices low.

It’s still not the total trade embargo I’d prefer to see.

[Az Joe]

You’re an idiot.

[DIRTYSECRET]

*Insane. You would drain the SPR and not affect Russia at all.*

The SPR is there for the democrats to use as they see fit, just like the military. For some reason it’s to be used in the country’s strategic interests but only the democrats seem to use it.

Ukraine invasion? This just might apply but we’re not doing our part drilling to begin wit. As for the lefties seeing the light forget it. Ain’t gonna happen.

[dhs12345]

Agreed about energy. The people running our energy infrastructure are clowns. If it weren't a political disaster for them, they'd make gasoline, natural gas, etc. so damned expensive that average folks couldn't afford it. See, their goal is to train us, coerce us, force us. After all it is mother earth that they are protecting and at all costs.

They are not our friends. They are our enemies. So it is very wise to protect yourself if you have the resources and make yourself less dependent upon them and the energy infrastructure in general. They are hell bent on destroying the energy infrastructure (and anyone who gets in the way).

Solar on your house. Good idea. Depends I guess. That is the trick — the ROI curve. It is not cheap (thousands or tens of thousands of dollars) and it can take a while to break even. Parameters in the ROI equation — current energy rates, cost of installation, cost of maintenance, tax rebates, how much the power company pays you for the energy generated, how much you are saving in energy each period....

Other things to consider... 1. can it power the home without the grid being operational; 2. do not lease it. Pay for it outright if possible. #1 may not be practical but it would be nice to charge cell phones, a small load, etc. while the power grid is down. But my understanding is that solar system on your house shuts down if the power grid goes down.

BTW, I drive a hybrid car. Although all-electric vehicles are NOT WISE in my opinion. A hybrid simply makes a gasoline engine more efficient. Have I reached the ROI point? Probably not. Lol. Not yet anyway.

[dhs12345]

And the country is faced with a serious shortage of energy and still they refuse to reverse their decisions.

We need to increase energy production and it is a desperate situation. Increasing the availability of energy reduces its price thereby hurting Russia and Iran, our enemies economically and it takes away Russia's leverage.

Drill baby drill!

[Tell It Right]

Yes, if the grid power goes down (i.e. because of a storm) a person's home solar system goes down too, but only if they've signed up for the power buyback program. If, like me, you bought an inverter with a feature for "no output" (because my power provider doesn't do "net metering" I'd have to pay a large monthly fee to sell power to the utility at a tiny fraction of the rate they charge us, thus I don't participate in that program, thus I bought an inverter that I set to not put power onto the grid even if I have no use for that power), then when the power goes out my solar system supplies power to the house. It's kind of like a gas generator backup in that it won't power the whole house, just whatever circuits I put into a separate panel just for backup. So it'll run my variable speed heat pump, my water heater, my hot tub, and a handful of lights and outlets throughout the house. Of course, in that scenario I ration my power so that my home batteries last through the night until the sun comes back out (again, much like with a gas backup generator). Another thing I do is pay attention to the weather. If it's going to storm in a day or two I set my inverter to put all solar power into the batteries unless the batteries are charged, and to not draw power from the batteries. The idea is to save the 30 kWh of battery storage for backup in case the power goes out at night. Then when the storms pass I set the inverter back into save money mode (charge the batteries only if my solar is more than what the house needs at that time, and draw power from the batteries before drawing from the grid if the solar is not producing what the house needs).

I'm looking at getting an EV if I can get a truck version cheap enough. I'm thinking of the F-150 Lightning. Part of my math on the ROI is expecting to get 30% to 50% of all of my miles for free by charging it on days I have excess solar power beyond what I need to power my house and my home batteries. I'm married and we need two cars anyway, so we'll keep one gas car to have the best of both worlds with EV and gas.

[dhs12345]

Wow. And you use batteries. Interesting. And that allows you a better backup power source when the utility power is offline. Unlikely that you’d be able to provide decent power to the house directly from the panels. Even for a small load. Also, be careful with the batteries. They can be dangerous when the system runs away. Maybe a separate shack from the house? What battery chemistry do they use for this solution?

There is additional conversion loss — converting DC to AC. Have you considered using the DC directly from the battery subsystem? One less conversion loss step (less heat generated, etc). You’d probably still need a DC-DC converter to regulate down to 5V, etc. Then raw DC, etc.

Anyway, many of your household electronics may run directly off of DC. You’d have to figure out which. My guess is that you’d have a DC port (or ports) in your wall panels right next to the three prong IEC plug outlet. There may be a bit of voltage drop since DC doesn’t distribute as efficiently as AC. Depends on the nominal DC voltage I guess. But the distances and distribution IR losses might be low and manageable.

Does your inverter provide a “perfect” sine wave? Or a crude square wave?

IMO, I’d wait on the 100% EV since it still half baked on the power utility end. Not enough power being generated at the power plant. Unless you can charge your EV from your home solar panels. :)

[Tell It Right]

Actually, the solar system does almost completely run the house. Take yesterday to today. From 8:00 AM yesterday until 7:00 AM this morning I didn't pull any power from the grid. Why? Because my inverter can produce 9 kW continuous DC to AC power. So as long as I have enough solar coming in (10.2 kW with optimum conditions, currently 8.1 kW) and/or battery storage (30 kWh total, but since I drain them no more than 70% count it as 21 kWh usable storage) I don't pull from the grid except for the rare times I'm running so many heavy powered appliances to total over 9 kW (and even then only the power beyond 9 kW is pulled from the grid).

Yes, to batteries being dangerous, but that's mainly older model batteries from the "early" days of solar storage. My batteries are much safer for two reasons. Each battery has built in BMS (battery management software that, among other things, does internal checks to make sure it's not overheating, and only if things are in the good does it keep the circuit closed). The other thing is that I have a total of six 48V LifePo4 lithium batteries that store 5 kWh each. Basically, it's much safer to pull a load from many powerful batteries simultaneously than it is to pull the same load from only one or two small-powered batteries and hope it keeps up without burning itself up.

[dhs12345]

Directly from the panels? Maybe but it doesn’t add up. But it is something that I will consider if/when I look into it. I’d size the system accordingly if it is not too expensive. Of course, it depends on the time of the day, etc. and only a narrow window of time when it can completely power the house.

I am extra careful with batteries these days. I personally witnessed a small cellphone battery destroy a car. The “safety” features failed and the charger kept forcing current into the cellphone battery. The temperature was so hot that it started to melt the windshield. I bet that your battery system has many times the energy than that little cellphone battery. Paralleling batteries is probably safer since each has to provide less current. However, they need to be able to current share equally. I presume that you have it set up in a parallel configuration.

[Tell It Right]

Yes, there's a conversion loss from DC to AC. But my inverter is 96% efficient. It'd be infeasible to run DC lines from my inverter throughout the house to be able to plug our phones and tablet to regain that 4% lost, especially since my few DC powered items draw little power anyway. They do make DC powered appliances, but those are almost all small appliances for RV's. For a while, RV's were a major portion of the solar/battery market. Now that inverters are much more efficient I doubt DC appliances will be around much longer.

Yes, my inverter produces a "perfect" sine wave. But that's because I spent extra on the inverter for other reasons. I wanted an inverter powerful enough to give me 9 kW conversion from DC to AC, and also have powerful charge controllers. Basically, there was no use spending a lot on solar panels to give me up to 10 kW coming in unless I made sure that power could be put to somewhere useful. (One weak link in the system makes the overall throughput weak and horribly inefficient.)

As far as waiting for a 100% free charged EV goes, it's not about improvement in EV technology that I'd be waiting on. It'd be about upgrading my current solar system. The system I had put onto my house was meant to provide as much as my house usually needs and not much more -- why pay for more than I need? I overdid it a little and there are many days I have a little extra power that could be used to charge an EV. Especially if I use an optional feature of my inverter to power a separate circuit panel intermittently -- only if my home batteries are at a configured charge (say 80% or more). The idea being that if I have enough battery charge to make it through the night (probably) before the sun comes up the next day, then use any power above that for stuff I don't need all the time.

Imagine me coming home with an EV, which means it's time to plug it in to charge it like all other EV owners do every time they come home. And imagine I had two charging outlets to choose from: either a 240V/48A constant powered outlet to charge the F-150 Lightning for 19 miles for every hour it's charged, or a 240V/32A outlet that's powered only some of the time (giving 14 miles for every hour its charged). If I came home with a low "tank" in my EV or if I planned to do a lot of driving the next day, I'd plug it into the constant powered outlet knowing that most or all of that power would come from the grid. (If I need it charged I need it charged, no getting around it.) But if I come home with a lot "left in the tank" I'd plug it into the intermittently powered outlet. I may get a charge for a while until my home solar batteries drop to 80% charged (because of power demand from charging the EV plus demand from the house) and at that point it'll automatically shut off without me having to monitor it and go out to the garage to unplug the EV. The same with it automatically start charging the next day if I leave it charged after the sun comes out and my home batteries are charged enough. Then there's also the DC to AC conversion max of 9 kW (the intermittent charging of 240V/32A is 7.7 kW, so for it to be powered not only do I need a high home battery charge but also not be consuming more than 1.3 kW with the rest of the house).

[Tell It Right]

Yes, the batteries are set up in a parallel configuration. They’re in a cabinet that looks like a computer server rack, and all of them are connected in parallel to the same bus lines. And that’s in a part of the garage that doubles as a storm shelter, a small room with concrete blocks walls and concrete floor and ceiling. (Storm shelters built into homes is common in Alabama with both our tornados and with our many hills making it easy for the bottom floor to be partially built into the ground).

[cgbg]

The only good solution is a massive increase in oil production—any which way we can.

All other proposals range from useless to totally insane.

[dhs12345]

Does your system come with software and a “computer” to monitor it and help you manage it and program it? Probably networked through wifi.

Mostly for monitoring so that you know how much your home consumes vs how much is directly available vs how much is in the battery subsystem accounting for inefficiencies, etc. and tells you realtime how many minutes, hours, etc. your system can provide power. I would also display how much energy is generated versus stored, time of day, etc.

That way you could play around with which devices are plugged or turned on when you lose power. Also, many gadgets still consume power even though they are “turned off.” It can be a significant amount of power. That probably means getting power strips for those devices — the good ol’ mechanical power switch.

With computations and knowing how much power you consume would be useful. Then you could better control the overall consumption.

Also, I have not tested this out (a disclaimer) but many devices that use AC and have a bridge front end and switcher back end will run off of DC. Example: your desktop PC. Obviously, AC motors or devices with an AC transformer won't work. Details to be worked out because the DC voltage has to be high enough for the switcher to turn on.

[dhs12345]

Good. It is surprising how much energy is stored in a battery and if it fails it can be dramatic. Probably fire and very high temperatures. That is what I witnessed.

[dhs12345]

Agreed. But prepare yourself (be prepared!) because Biden and the rest are evil and don't care about you. If they had their way, the petroleum energy sector would be driven into bankruptcy and if Americans suffer, well "that is just the price that we all have to pay" while they sip their champagne and eat their caviar.

Their globalist agenda which includes global warming will most definitely hurt average Americans and they are hell bent on imposing it and they may succeed. Depends on how foolish Americans are and now right now I don't have a lot of confidence in the average American voter.

[Tell It Right]

Yes, my inverter has an output through wi-fi. I don’t control it through wi-fi (to make changes I have to do it in person on the inverter’s control panel). But I can look at a current snapshot and have daily or monthly or even yearly graphs either on a website or a phone app. Plus it lets me download telemetry recorded at 5-minute candles that I import into a homemade SQL database service running on my laptop (I’m a data nerd by profession). I use the website for discussions with my wife in normal people lingo (hi, honey, do whatever you want whenever you want, but if you want to save a little money keep in mind that running the dryer on high temp drains power at 6 kW as seen here, while running...). I run SQL queries against the imported data for the geeking it out analysis I’ve been talking about in these posts. That’s how I know things like I average 2.44 hours per day in which my batteries are fully charged. LOL (to make me consider what to do with that power, like charge an EV)

[dhs12345]

Nice, very nice!

I am a nerd too and would love to have that kind of visibility and control.