That goes without saying, of course.
I keep harping on this, and I’m sure I’m a bore on the topic, but it really is the brutal truth. Batteries are the crux of the matter.
Look at the people who want to use solar or wind power to light up their homes as another example. I used to help several families in central NV, where I was known as the only EE within 80 to 100 miles radius that could help straighten out their solar power systems.
These poor people would be sold a solar or wind power system from some bunch of Unicorn-fart sniffers in California, Reno or Arizona, they’d install it, get it up and going and the dealer would imply that they were all set.
Nooooo.... the batteries need minding. And then I’d have to come out to their remote ranch and start telling them how to equalize their lead-acid batteries, how to do tend to them, how they’d degrade if charged too fast, discharged too fast, etc.
And in every case, the people to whom I’d teach all this stuff would ask “Well, this is all news to me! No one ever told me about this!” or “They told me that that was all in the past!”
Then I’d have to tell them that the BEST person they could get to explain all this stuff to them would be a WWII submariner, because diesel-electric boats lived and died on these issues. I’d then add “I would have suggested a WWI submariner, but as far as I know, they’re all dead...”
And you’d see these people get ROYALLY pissed off... because they’d then realize that there wasn’t some “huge leap forward” in recent solar and wind power stuff... it was the same stuff from the 1970’s, and the little integrated inverter/control panel was really the only new thing on the scene. Most of these ranches, you see, had flirted with solar power during the initial wave of enthusiasm in the 70’s... and during the 80’s to 90’s, as diesel costs came down, they just went to gensets puttering along on the ranch during their waking hours. When diesel went up, they checked into solar power (again) and were sold the same stuff (basically) as they were in the 70’s.
Good post!