I don't know what's happening in the USA, but here the basic price for power just doubled. We got the major part of the system installed before prices went up, however everything has significantly increased in cost in the last 12 months or so.
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- Thread starter ChoosingGod
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I think you may have been listening to some odd sources.
As a homesteading and self sufficiency nerd among other brands of nerd, I can tell you that some of the most overt non-liberal/leftist/woke types are huge on solar. You should see my youtube feed. Solar is tough to avoid. For that matter one of the guys in my friend group who is a crusty as can be old former Army Delta guy runs his home, large shop and entire farm on a solar and wind combo. He is practically focused as one can be and it worked for his situation properly in the cost benefit analysis.
There are legitimate criticisms of solar but I suspect what you are seeing is people without a lot of nuance reacting and pushing back on the grift of green energy and climate change.
Nothing wrong with alternative energy generation if it makes sense in a given scenario obviously but it is the fake science of anthropogenic climate change and carbon etc which is simply a power and resource extraction hustle.
So I imagine that much of what you will have read is one of the baby and bathwater situations.
I would love to be off grid myself...less from the point of view of the energy being green, red or fruit striped...but more from the point of view of being less dependent upon others.
In re solar, it is certainly getting better but it is only comparatively recently that the systems were efficient enough to start being practical. It is getting Loads of adaptation currently in what I see in Texas at least.
The whole world has been in a quiet'ish recession for a while but it is certainly ramping up. Can't comment beyond that not knowing where here is in your case.
The main reason we had solar to begin with was because of the unreliability of supply. There was, and still are, periods with no supply for several days. Solar was initially for survival when the grid went down. However, we heard rumors of big price increases coming so we upgraded and included grid supply to reduce/eliminate the bill. We also got a basic solar set-up to the business and that has also proven to be a good investment, not that it's saving much but it means we are open for business when others are closed.
Philippines
Ah, that's right.
While reading the reply above I was reminded of our @MemeFan and his advocacy for a project which I suspect amounts to the new Byzantium notion I go on about on occasion in SA and my skepticism...because of the issue with the grid.
My niece married a guy from the Philippines. He gives it very mixed reviews. From whst little I know, one apparently needs to be a bit of a juggler
If you like to engage in extreme, high adrenalin rush activities, take up driving here. What one needs more than anything else is high levels of tolerance for.... nothing accomplished.
Children of God
Member
Solar provides independence from the grid but allows some of the conveniences of modern life. That initial cost is a killer though.
We're 100% off grid here so we have to produce everything we use. I have 30kwh of battery but will be doubling or tripling it soon. Long term, we're going to be damming our river and installing hydro. It's the only way that we will be able to affordably support our children also building homes here. My children are young so I still have probably ten years before I need to start being concerned about that project.
Terraces definitely provide a challenge but they're integral to keeping water on our property. Eventually, the entire property will be full of terraces, swales, ponds, and reservoirs. I have a decent chunk of land so I'm thinking in decades not years. My children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren are going to have an amazing place to live though.
A caution: (And this is true in most places in the US, no doubt elsewhere.)
"Hybrid" systems (anything grid-connected) are highly regulated.
And the problem comes
Some it is possible to disconnect and use (but, as noted, without sufficient storage, essentially only during sunshine.) Others are literally so tightly integrated that unless you know enough about the design to "fool them," you are simply powerless.
The key is to understand the design, or at least know someone who does. (And, be aware that even attempting to bypass elements will be prohibited in most of the "Big Cities.")
Personally I'm a fan of being 100% off-grid. And the nearest powerline (or EMP-attractor
) is miles away.
I started building our "runway dream home" - WAY out in the boondocks - back when solar panels cost $5/W or so. Much of what I bought in the last few years has been at what I call "THE price" of below about $.50/W.
The trouble now is that racking (i.e., STEEL, thanks to de-industrialization and Bidenflation) can now run more than the panels. Sometimes MUCH more.
But here's the point I would make:
The REAL breakthrough was in LED lighting. Our entire home and hangar and shop and greenhouse can now run on less total power 90% of the time than what my BATHROOM lights consumed in the last house we had on the grid.
(And I'm happy to share what we learned over a dozen years 'the hard way' - as an EE - if folks are inclined to try it.)
PS> Battery technology, in general, STILL sucks!!!! (The best option, far and away, IMHO, was developed by Thomas Edison well over a century ago. Some of his original NiFe batteries are STILL IN SERVICE! But you can't buy one, except from the CCP. And they are exactly what you'd expect.)
I don't want exploding Li batteries anywhere under roof. And LiFePO4 are the 'least bad,' but still leave a lot to be desired. I watched what were called "supercaps" in development before we even built off-grid; I'm still waiting. Government mandates have stifled real innovation, by pushing people to buy crap in the name of non-existent 'man-made global warming.' The truth is, an inexpensive, economically-viable safe long-life battery would be the death knell for the NWO - they couldn't control the outflow from the cesspools if it wasn't as hard as possible.
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Agree with respect to LEDs. Love them save for the false claims of 10+ year life. Lol, ok false advertiser. They certainly make a difference with respect to power consumption.
Correct - but I think the general mechanism is the 'power supply' circuitry. The LEDs last a long time; I save the 'dead' bulbs for 'post-apocalypse,' and just keep a big supply on hand while they're cheap.
[For nerds only: I wish they'd include a schematic diagram on the box! Some are, I suspect, just massively-connected series strings, but they also have a 60 or 120 Hz flicker. Others - and I haven't found one in a while, but have a few around here that have lasted well - have a small DC supply inside, and obviously a filter cap: they are "slow on" but nicer.]
True.
Issue of nuance. The LEDs themselves are great. The bulb...for lack of a better shorthand, is frequently crap.
In re schematic...
Two things. First you probably used to hang out at RadioShack hoping to pick up girls. Second, we both know we are not allowed to repair our own property which break constantly via low quality or planned obsolescence.
Love it! I’ve installed miles and miles of swales and terraces all over the USA in my professional life.Terraces definitely provide a challenge but they're integral to keeping water on our property. Eventually, the entire property will be full of terraces, swales, ponds, and reservoirs. I have a decent chunk of land so I'm thinking in decades not years. My children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren are going to have an amazing place to live though.
Context.
Solar power for individual homes & businesses is great. Whenever you are making an off-grid or grid-tied system, you are designing it to fit with your actual demands, and including batteries as necessary to make it work. You end up with a functional and economically viable system. But - and this is very important when making an off-grid system - you do this by reducing power consumption also: Gas or woodfired space heating & cooking & water heating, buying new efficient refrigerators, LED lighting. It is that careful attention to usage also, and the daily pattern of usage, that makes the solar power system economically viable.
However, massive solar farms to supply the grid are foolhardy. Because at a national grid scale, usage is not tailored to solar. The greatest demand is in the evening, after solar generation ceases, and people start cooking & heating their homes and put their electric car on to charge overnight. So, however many solar panels you put in, they cannot supply peak load. As soon as the sun goes down all the coal and nuclear and hydro power stations have to increase their output to cover the peak. So you still need enough conventional generation to supply the peak load - and if you have that anyway, you might as well just run it through the day also to run the off-peak load. So there is almost no economic gain in installing solar farms, they don't take the place of a single conventional power station, they just add to the cost of the grid for minimal return.
They may also increase the overall CO2 emissions from the grid (if you're concerned about that), because you have to account for all the emissions of making and installing all those solar panels, on top of the emissions of installing the conventional power stations that you need to keep anyway, so it's a large increase only slightly offset by a small reduction in daytime coal consumption. Then you have to consider the negative environmental consequences of covering acres of land in solar panels also. So there's no environmental case either, usually, if you consider a full lifecycle analysis.
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I dunno. There is possibility. Anytime something obvious doesn't happen or there is uniformity, except regulation.Wait what, it is illegal to make quiet water pipes?You definitelay have them in other countries.
Like size of US cars, form of US cities, speech patterns in workforce, even racial composition of workforce.
As Tom Luongo says, I read regulation outside US, then I read crazy crazy US regulation.
What if you love sound of happenings?
And tariffs to protect steel industry.
It advanced about 1% per year. Real reason laptops and mobiles last longer are massive reductions in power usage. Battery contribution: LOLOLOLOLOL
No Byzantium. That's
Byzantium is smaller version of late roman empire. Think bureaucracy, idiots making laws etc..... They all deserve only ☢☢☢☢☢
No, real goal is to restore political and legal system of early middle europe.
I was talking about off-grid batteries, not control-mechanism power sources.... LOL...