Posted on 02/16/2024 7:04:35 AM PST by Tell It Right
Led by an elderly man experiencing cognitive decline, the Biden administration has launched a strident effort to promote electric vehicle (E.V.) sales. This push is part of a globalist climate change agenda that ignores the unreliability of renewable energy during winter storms and heat waves.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Good article in AT. Nothing new really. Just a summary of how the government shouldn't be trying to do a one-size-fits-all "solution" of forcing square pegs into round imaginary holes. And I'm not anti-EV or anti-solar. I have both. I just happen to be in a good situation for them. And even with that, I can't be 100% dependent on them like the Dims make it out to be. It should be a free market thing.
Yes, having 30% of cars be EVs would be a good thing for everyone. The leftist dream of all cars being electric is nonsense.
“The leftist dream of all cars being electric is nonsense.“
…while at the same time, telling us that THEY need control over our furnaces and air-conditioners.. defeating the whole “purpose”..
Yes, having 30% of cars be EVs would be a good thing for everyone.“
No it would not. That much drain on the power grid is not “good for everyone”.
“ Yes, having 30% of cars be EVs would be a good thing for everyone.”
There is no way that the electric infrastructure can support this.
If this was a serious issue, Biden could easily Force ALL Federal Employee’s to use EV vehicles for All transportation, BAN ICE powered Vehicles from All Federal Property, and make it a Felony for any Federal Employee to use, own or possess an ICE powered vehicle.
“The leftist dream of all cars being electric is nonsense.”
It seems to me that most of what the left advocates is nonsense, dangerous nonsense.
I’m an average guy, my education is not in automotive technology, but I am interested. The disclaimer is because I saw the huge problems with EVs right from the start.
Now if an average joe can spot the problems without much trouble there can be only one conclusion. They are pushing EVs and want the negative outcomes.
Why? That’s a whole different conversation.
, BAN ICE powered Vehicles from All Federal Property
—
Including military land/sea bases and equipment!!
Nearest recharge station is thirty miles from here. Meanwhile, four, er that is FIVE, new GAS Stations have gone in within ten miles of me!.
Sorry but the laws of physics rule. EVs are an ultimate loser. Virtue signaling elites who do not really depend on them for their well being buy and drive Teslas. Only fools buy and drive Ford and GM EVs. Only decent affordable automobiles being made are Japanese cars with internal combustion engines.
Have you ever watched any of the videos on YouTube about how COBALT is mined in the Congo?
How much of it is done by hand. With no safety conditions.
How the constant exposure to the cobalt dust results in their children having a much higher incident of birth defects.
So, yes EVs are great for virtue signaling people who get to charge them for free at their workplace. However, the materials used to build the batteries is horrible for the people involved in the third world countries.
Do you just “sell” back energy to the power company, or do you store in your home?
I have a very modest solar installation in my home and it is off-grid, but I have yet to see what it can output in the summer. I am trying to find loads that it can handle which I might seasonally vary. I assume that your EV is way beyond any use of your solar if you are off-grid. Is that correct?
I have already become somewhat of a convert to solar, though NOT in any way that the government wants to promote it. The heavy hand of government is only interested in payola. I am looking to solar for long-term no-grid-power to support a 100% electric home.
I may be in market for new car in the next 2 years and I think a Hybrid will make the most sense. If I were not in high electric cost state I would consider a plug in hybrid.
The car I am looking at is a Toyota that gets 36 miles to gallon compared to other comparable priced autos getting 18 miles. Toyota guarantees battery for hybrid 10 years or 150k miles currently. I also understand these vehicles require much less brake jobs.
I also understand these vehicles require much less brake jobs.I drive a 2003 Chevy Silverado 2500 that I bought new. It has over 100K on the original brakes
Trying to look into the future, I see the yards of junked cars quadrupling in size.
couldn’t con me on the covid vaxx bio weapon, can’t con me on the foolishness of the electric vehicle.
I don't have enough solar to be 100% off-grid. But I do have enough so that last year it produced 83% of our power in our all-electric home, including charging the EV for 16K miles (not counting the other 10K miles we drove it that we charged away from home). In other words, of the 20,284.3kWh of power my electrical panels consumed in year 2023, only 3,350.8kWh had to be pulled from the grid (17%). The other 83% was pulled either directly from solar panels or from batteries charged by solar.
I only recently started selling power to the grid in late September. October was really the only month I sold a significant amount to the grid (742.5 kWh). I'm sure that'll change when winter is over. I predict from March to October (8 months) I'll sell a lot of power to the grid, with the other 4 months being the months I have real power bills.
To answer your question, the algorithm for incoming power is this:
1) First dibs goes to powering the electrical panels. If there is more solar coming in than my electrical panels need, then
2) charge my batteries. If my batteries are charged at least 70% (configurable), then
3) power the "smart load" electrical panel. This is to power the few things that I can do intermittently. Most notably, I usually charge the EV like this if it's already charged enough for tomorrow's driving. My wife usually asks for at least 120 mile range, so if it's already charged more than that, I'll plug the EV into a charger that's intermittently powered by this smart load electrical panel. If even more solar is coming in then
4) keep charging the home batteries to 100%. If those are charged to 100% then
5) sell the excess power to the grid.
About step 2 above: on most nights in the winter with the weather we have in Alabama with my variable speed heat pump, but with electric heat strips for the few times it gets too cold here for the heat pump, and with our hybrid water heater needing only 380W to heat the water tank...if my home batteries are charged 70% before the sun goes down then I usually have enough battery power to power the home without pulling from the grid. This is because I set my inverters to not drain my home batteries lower than 30% SOC before pulling from the grid. The difference between 70% and 30% is 40%, of my 92kWh battery stack, call it 36kWh being plenty on most winter nights to not have to pull from the grid. When the winter is over I change it to 60% to power the smart load panel (I don't need as much power at night in the summer half).
About step 5 above: when I sell power to the grid I get about 1/4th the amount per kWh that I have to pay when I pull power from the grid. That's better than nothing, but it's not as cost effective as if I utilize the solar power for saving how much I have to pull from the grid. Thus, selling power to the grid is the last priority after everything else is satisfied. And my inverters have the option to turn off the grid sell if I want (read: if regulations change to make me pay more for the privilege of selling power to the grid, or if regulations make me have to turn off my home power if the grid goes down). In fact, I had solar for 2 years before selling power to the grid strictly because I wanted to study the effects. I basically downloaded the recorded telemetry from my inverters, imported that into a homemade SQL database, and ran a bunch of queries. I then wrote a C# program to calculate what my power bill would be if I used the different rate plans for residential customers, and the different fees and rate plans for selling power to the grid, and wanted to see what that looked like year-round before deciding to sell power. Research the fees you have to pay for selling power to the grid. Make sure it's worth it. In my case, I increase my fees some during the 4 winter months -- more than I get from selling power to the grid in those months. But in the other 8 months I have small fees (demand charge mainly) and sell enough power to the grid that over the entire year it'll lower my power bills a net of $200 or so more than the extra fees increase them.
Also, I highly recommend studying your telemetry before upgrading, whether or not you decide to sell power to the grid. It's good to get more by investing more into it (take advantage of economies of scale), but don't invest more into it than you get return on it (don't fight the law of diminishing returns). That's why I stop at about 80% free power. My 12 power bills in 2023 totaled $890 ($74 per month on average). Again, that includes charging the EV for 16K miles (1,300 miles per month). I can live with that without spending the huge amount it'd take to be 100% off-grid unless the god-denying Dims make a mark-of-the-beast type requirement for buying energy.
6) Last but not least, don't overlook normal energy improvements to your home. Part of the battle being won is the fact that my variable speed heat pump heats and cools my home a lot more efficiently than my old AC and furnace did. And my hybrid water heater has a built-in heat pump to heat the water tank running at only 380W (though it can take 2 hours in the summer and 4 hours in the winter to heat the tank after both my wife and I shower). And my hybrid water heater has a cold air by-product that I direct into my HVAC during the warm 7 months of the year so that my home variable speed heat pump can operate at low speed for a couple of extra hours each day. Additionally, the air intake for my water heater is coming from the attic: fresh warm air with plenty of free heat that the water heater's heat pump can use to heat the water tank without working hard. Because my HVAC and water heater operate so efficiently, my main energy hogging "appliance" is charging the EV. Which I point out in step 3 that I do usually only with excess power anyway. Think of the solar power being good, the batteries being good, the variable speed heat pump being good, the hybrid water heater being good, and the EV being good. But better yet, is the overall system as a whole works better than the sum of its parts.
Seeing EV charging stations turned into parking lots with the smug Tesla owners stranded with frozen batteries ought to be a deterrent from anyone buying an EV in parts of the country with cold winters. Sadly the 2021 experience with widespread blackouts in Texas may soon be coming to the rest of the country thanks to the Biden administration and sycophant liberal governors. We are just one prolonged heatwave or polar vortex away from having our electric grid collapse as government mandates are shutting down fossil fuel plants and even removing hydroelectric dams and replacing them with unreliable windmills and solar farms.
But from a free market perspective, there is a place for some people to get EV's. I need two cars because I'm married. Thus I don't have to be all in on EV or all in on ICE. My wife and I have one of each (EV crossover and ICE pickup). We do most of our driving in the EV, but have the ICE both for pickup chores (which EV trucks are bad at) and for if we go on a long trip that an EV would be bad at (i.e. few fast charging options, or if I go without her because I don't want to stop every 200 miles and walk around 10-15 minutes like she does LOL). Plus we live in the south and don't have harsh winters (when we do take a road trip up north to visit extended family it's in the warm months, but we have the ICE pickup if we decide to go on a road trip up north). And we can charge at home (last year 16K of our miles were charged at home, with the other 10K miles charged on trips).
I would advise against getting an EV if it's your only car, or if you can't charge at home, or if most of your road trips have bad charging options, or if you have harsh winters, or if you don't drive enough miles to get enough gas savings to get a good ROI on the extra costs of having an EV. I also wouldn't get an EV unless one of your two cars is needing to be replaced soon anyway (get all the goody you can out of what you got before spending money on another car).
By us having both an EV and an ICE, we have some energy security by not having our transportation completely dependent on just gasoline (which the Dims every now and then mess up or make too expensive to use) or just power (which the Dims can mess up too). Basically they have to mess up both energy sources to demobilize us. And in our case, since 80% of our power is provided on site from solar (last year I pulled only 17% of our power from the grid), if they mess up the grid then we could do most of our local driving in the EV anyway (charging at home).
But that's just me looking at things from a free market stand point (not trying to make one size fits all) and from a stand point that the more self-reliant my wife and I are with energy, the less the god-denying Dims can control us with their warmageddon cult energy policies. If I could drill and refine my own oil I would -- in many ways an ICE car is superior to an EV. But I can't do that. However, I can collect solar power through the sunshine God blesses Alabama with and I don't have to ask Washington DC to not overregulate the energy that's already hitting my property or ask their permission for what I do with it. Solar as the Dims push it sucks -- it's a horrible thing for the grid. But decentralized solar in a free market situation (if the Dims were to allow that) where each of us gets it if we want it, utilize it how we want it, and that includes charging an EV to utilize that decentralized solar out onto the road for local driving ---- I'm very pleased with how that's working for us.
I thank you for the very detailed reply. I am afraid I will have to study it, for a while. You sound like a modern-day Thomas Jefferson, inventing what you think is important. I am glad it seems that you have found a way to make solar work for you!
I am glad that you mentioned the hybrid water heater. I only heard, on FR, a couple of days ago about a high-efficiency, heat-pump, clothes dryer. These kinds of improvements in electric appliance power consumption could greatly improve the capability of solar power. I will definitely look into this.
One thing that I have learned in my brief excursion into solar power is that solar power HATES trees! I have become an amateur arborist in insuring that my solar panels have access to sunlight. Some of this has a side benefit in motivating me to remove an invasive Chinese Sumac tree, which was actually prospering quite well on my property.
Another thing that I have learned is that the latitude that I live at is not helping me. The Sun, in Idaho, makes a sweep down very low on the horizon in the winter. This invites trees and even very far-off objects to block solar collection.
Still, it is a fun use of my time in retirement!
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