Tech Won't Save Us

[RE]

Not looking good for charging up all those Teslas.  Not sure where they figure all the money is going to come from besides more printing of debt, which they intend to do while reducing inflation?  Of course I am not one of the smartest guys in the room figuring this magic act out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORtHnYBuoQw

RE

[K-Dog]

Not looking good for charging up all those Teslas.  Not sure where they figure all the money is going to come from besides more printing of debt, which they intend to do while reducing inflation?  Of course I am not one of the smartest guys in the room figuring this magic act out.

RE

The 'running your house off your car' scenario makes no damn sense.  The Power Grid Video is all about trying to keep things going the way they are.

 

There is not enough copper and lithium to do it.  More than the imaginary money you correctly predict is needed.  Imaginary metals anyone?

Copper Shortage Getting Real

Article snippets:

Some of the world's largest mining companies and metal traders are warning that by 2025, a massive shortfall will emerge for copper, which is now the world's most critical metal due to its essential role in the green economy. The deficit will be so large, The Financial Post stated last September, that it could itself hold back global growth, stoke inflation by raising manufacturing costs and throw global climate goals off course.

The International Study Group puts the coming deficit into perspective, noting that in 2021, the global copper shortfall was 441,000 tons, equivalent to less than 2% of demand for the refined metal, but enough to drive copper prices 25% higher. Using S&P Global's forecast, 2035's shortfall will be 10 times higher, at about 20% of consumption.

Backyard corn growing is the future.

[Nearings Fault]

I still maintain that the days of a central grid for rural areas are over. I am following closely the vehicle to home technologies that are being marketed. Right now they are catering to rich fear filled people driving trucks and wanting to keep their central ac going during a hurricane blackout. A shitty use for the tech but That is not the tech's fault. There is no reason why your house could not have a small battery bank and your car the large battery bank. The large solar array could do the house and the extra going to your car. The car could trickle back to the small house battery as needed at night. All of that is off the shelf and can pay for itself slowly over time. Upfront costs are large but they are the real costs not invisible ones. What bugs me is we have gotten used to buried costs that you don't see but are real. Cost like tens of thousands of miles of copper wires, transformers, substations, land devoted to power lines, tree trimming, coal subsidies, gas subsidies, clean up costs, to name but a few. All of the electrification tech can work as long as we change our narrative of big being better. I'm not too hopeful on that one. That's the version of the future I choose to plant my flag on these days.
Cheers,  NF

[K-Dog]

There is no reason why your house could not have a small battery bank and your car the large battery bank. The large solar array could do the house and the extra going to your car. The car could trickle back to the small house battery as needed at night. All of that is off the shelf and can pay for itself slowly over time.
Cheers,  NF

It makes sense if you are generating your own power. 

The charge efficiency of a lithium battery tops out at 95%.  It is typically lower in the real world.  Generate your own power and you don't pay for the loss.

People in the city are on a grid.  Moving energy back and forth to a battery is an expense city people avoid by being on a grid.  Charging an auto battery and using it to drive a car makes sense for them.  Using an auto battery for anything else for a person connected to a grid is extra cost and solves no need.

The number of rural people is very small compared to the number of city people.  The majority of vehicle buyers gain nothing by running their house off a car.  When the car is at home it most likely needs to be charged anyway no matter where you live.  At night.  Perhaps all night.  What is the house supposed to do?  Wait for the car to charge?  What does the house do when the car is not home?

If a car is running a house it will never have a full charge.  When exactly would it be charged?

Did she consider that when the blackout is over the car will have to charge?  I hope it is a short blackout.  How much charge did she have when the blackout started?

She does not care.  She is living in a million dollar house with a 100K truck having no visible means of support.  What cares would she have?  Needing a full charge on the truck is not one of them.

[18hammers]

There is no reason why your house could not have a small battery bank and your car the large battery bank. The large solar array could do the house and the extra going to your car. The car could trickle back to the small house battery as needed at night. All of that is off the shelf and can pay for itself slowly over time.
Cheers,  NF

It makes sense if you are generating your own power. 

The charge efficiency of a lithium battery tops out at 95%.  It is typically lower in the real world.  Generate your own power and you don't pay for the loss.

People in the city are on a grid.  Moving energy back and forth to a battery is an expense city people avoid by being on a grid.  Charging an auto battery and using it to drive a car makes sense for them.  Using an auto battery for anything else for a person connected to a grid is extra cost and solves no need.

The number of rural people is very small compared to the number of city people.  The majority of vehicle buyers gain nothing by running their house off a car.  When the car is at home it most likely needs to be charged anyway no matter where you live.  At night.  Perhaps all night.  What is the house supposed to do?  Wait for the car to charge?  What does the house do when the car is not home?

If a car is running a house it will never have a full charge.  When exactly would it be charged?

Did she consider that when the blackout is over the car will have to charge?  I hope it is a short blackout.  How much charge did she have when the blackout started?

She does not care.  She is living in a million dollar house with a 100K truck having no visible means of support.  What cares would she have?  Needing a full charge on the truck is not one of them.

That add makes little sense, it claims 9.6 killowatts of exportable power. What is that? A momentary peak of power? It should state how many exportable "killowatt hours" are available.

[K-Dog]

Just the cable from the car to the house by itself will be worth 100 bucks.  $40 worth of 14 Gauge wire won't cut it.  You need 10 Gauge wire at least.  An inverter that can put out 9.6 Kw won't be cheap.

The gauge of wire used for EV charging depends on the charging capacity and the distance between the charging station and the electrical panel. Generally, for residential charging stations, 6 or 8 gauge wire is commonly used.

Cost is about $8 a foot for the wire and the inverter is worth over a thousand.  The woman in the ad might have got someone to hook it all up to her house for free since the only working people who can afford to buy that electric truck are high end hookers.  Incels with rich parents to the rescue!

I looked it up, This 40A Electric Vehicle Charger EV Car Charging Cable Cord 240V J1772 14-50 level 2 is $260 on E-Bay.



The woman is not working in a warehouse for a big box store and having a day off like I am.  20 bucks an hour is not going to justify spending thousands from a minimum wage job just to have hot coffee when the power goes out.

As a stoic a power outage is an opportunity to practice temperance.  Let the obstacle become the way.

The satisfaction of every idle whim by technology is not stoic.

I'll save my money and improve my character.

"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."

* The cable upon reflection, an EV owner would already have on the charger.  They would still need an inverter and the 'premium cable' probably costs more.  But this is splitting ----- copper wires.  I made my point.

[RE]

The concept of having a big batt for the car and small batt for the house and of course at least 1 EV car, along with a hefty solar array plus a grid connection gives you better than average resilience, but quite obviously is outta da budget for 95% of the population even in a relatively "rich" country like the FSoA.  The whole system is predicated on the suburban model of living where everybody has their own house and car.  What about all the folks who live in apartments in cities and don't even own their own car?   Apartment buildings aren't suitable for solar, there's not enough surface area with sun exposure for the number of living units stacked vertically on the property.  They also don't usually have a parking garage right under the building you might wire all the car batts to the living units from.  In other words, this whole model is unsuitable for anyone who lives in Manhattan or downtown Seattle, even the rich folks there who might be able to afford it.

Moving outward to Brooklyn and Queens where you mostly have Brownstones and attached housing the people do generally own cars, but mostly use street parking so being able to connect home and car is probably not possible, at the least it is impractical.  The 1/8th to 1/4 acre plots these dwellings sit on barely would provide enough space for your pv array, ussuming you have good southern exposure.

Once you make it out to Long Island or NJ and start finding the McMansions on 1/2 acre properties with attached garages, the paradigm becomes possible, but these days said domiciles go for $500K & up, to which you are now adding another $100K probably for the EV car, home batt, inverters, pv array and assorted wiring.  What percentage of the population can afford this solution?

Moving rural, the land and home sizes are larger and come cheaper, but at the expense of fewer high paid jobs so affording the whole package is still limited, and the total population also much smaller.

Taken all together, while this option is possible for a small segment of the population, it's not a society wide solution.  Nevertheless, EV transportation and solar powered homes are still held out as the Holy Grail for the Green Amerikan, like 2 cars in every garage and a white picket fence were the grail of post-WWII subdivisions like Levittown.  The Amerikan Dream for everyone.  Everyone never got that one, and even fewer will get this one.

RE

[K-Dog]

This whole model is unsuitable for anyone who lives in Manhattan or downtown Seattle, even the rich folks there who might be able to afford it.

EV transportation and solar powered homes are still held out as the Holy Grail for the Green Amerikan, like 2 cars in every garage and a white picket fence were the grail of post-WWII subdivisions like Levittown.  The Amerikan Dream for everyone.  Everyone never got that one, and even fewer will get this one.

Exactly right, but if your social position is comfortable enough you can practice the 'rising tide lifts all boats' logic of self-deception.  You can say fuck the boatless with a smile.

Being in a social position to be able to say such shit is a fantasy for most people.  In that fantasy Imagining such an attitude to be "OK" is a common delusion.  In fantasy anything goes. 

To that Buddy C sez: 
  Cut that shit out.

[Nearings Fault]

All valid points. I have no interest in the problems of urban population solar adoption. Their solutions should be transit and ride share services. Their power grid is very dense and pays for itself. My concerns and focus are on the aging rural grids that are prone to failure and don't have the density to be maintained properly. As to costs well the tech is new so it's pricey but so is hidden subsidies to grid power. Shrink the average house by 200 square feet and suddenly your solar costs are part of the house costs. Using the Ford lightning example they show a dedicated inverter charger setup with custom wiring and expensive accessories. All of that is useless fluff. Built into the Ford are high power inverters that can easily power critical loads in a house for days or slowly recharge a house based system. The much less expensive kia electrics have a plug in attachment for $200 that do the same thing. In rural areas if you have home based work you are spending most of your time at home. Most of the homes I see around me have at least one vehicle parked in the drive way most of the day. Experiences differ of course. I'm very interested in where all this goes. The world is changing I want to get an idea of how it's changing and hopefully not get crushed by it.
Cheers,
NF 

[RE]

If you go with a mixed solution like micro-nukes for the cities and the solar/batt option for the rich suburbs and rural, you are closer to a plausible total solution.  You wouldn't need such a vast expansion of the high voltage transmission lines that would take so much copper and aluminum and faces so many regulatory hurdles and shortage of manpower to build it and maintain it.

In this solution, suburbia would be limited to the rich while poor folks live in the cities with electricity, or in rural areas mostly without it.  The filthy rich would have the luxury skyscrapers for their city home and an off grid solar and wind powered rural estate in the countryside.  Basically the same organization as Jolly Old England circa 1880 when the Earl had his Estate and his London Town home.  Poor folks lived in squalor in the city or shacks on the estate to mind  the Lord's pigs and sheep.  The Manor got wired up for electricity in the 1920s, but the poor folks didn't start getting wired until after WWII.

I of course am no big fan of Nuke Puke, micro or otherwise, but this solution is at least plausible.  Not sure how much or how many of these micro nukes you would need to pull it off or how much it would cost, but it doesn't stretch my credibility like expanding and upgrading the grid does.  I am also unsure of how much Uranium this would require and whether enough can be mined up and refined, or how long it would take to build all these nukes if you started today.  I suspect it's a decade at least, probably 2.  Also don't know if enough nuclear power plant engineers could be trained up to staff them all.   Finally, the radioactive waste problem still remains.

The micro nuke solution also faces the same MONEY problem a grid build out does, which is that it is fabulously expensive and financing it with loans from already insolvent banks handed out to already insolvent construction companies with no clear idea how this debt could ever be paid by an increasingly poor population of consumers is a fiduciary magic act that is beyond my pay grade.

Regardless what solution is pursued here, I don't think any will come online fast enough to transition to the EV transport fleet with zero carbon by 2035.  As an increasing number of EVs get produced, the increased load will lead to more grid failures, blackouts and brownouts, or they will start rationing electricity.  I took a WAG that it will take about 5 years for this to become apparent.  Always risky to make predictions of course.

RE

[Nearings Fault]

We are In full agreement that the 2035 goal is ridiculous. I do think you overestimate the cost of solar though. I installed a 2kw array 5kwhr storage 3 kw inverter for under 10000 dollars us. Heating is by wood, no ac, full fridge, water pump, all light and comms. The system can be expanded to 3kw of solar. A good third of that was electrical and regulation. You could go the guerrilla solar route but I don't do that. So in that scenario you shrink your prefab home by 100 square ft ($250/sq ftX 100 = $25000) the solar costs are covered and you never have an electrical bill..
There could be shortages in the winter time but a $300 generator can run for 2 hours a day to make up for any lack.
As for nukes; Ontario is proposing a new massive 4500 Mega watt plant. Cost wise it would be less expensive to give every household 30000 of solar and storage then to build the thing... but of course that is not on the table.

[RE]

How long does it take your 2kw array to charge your EV, and how do you run your house while the car is chatging?

RE

[18hammers]

I would agree, everyone appears to over estimate solar costs. First you don't put anything in or on your house (I have but that is another story). Free standing array away from the house, all components in a free standing shed away from the house. This does 2 things, first just as with outdoor wood boilers, it does not effect your insurance (if you require or care about), and you can do the work yourself (it is not a dwelling unit).
I am assuming you have built the house to electrical code as you should have and thus your panels and the rest of the system just become the supply source. By doing the work yourself, Labour costs that you can cut out will drop 25 maybe 35% of your total costs. Second, components are cheap, cheap I am telling you. I say that as someone who started buying panels roughly in 2000 (75 watt 12 volt BPs) at a price that causes a nose bleed and tremor in my hands just thinking about.
The last time I bought panels was in 2012, Canadian manufacture, at 58 cents a watt. That is practically  free! One pallet of panels has lets say roughly 6500 watts, So $3800.00 gets you a power source that will last your lifetime, and that can power a reasonable home, even in the frozen north of Canada 10,10.5 months of the year. December is just crappy for sun so there is some augmentation with a 2000 watt inverter generator needed.
I buy inverters off kijij used, from people upgrading their system from 12 volt (I am happy with 12 volt)
Currently using a heavy low freq inverter bought of kijiji for 50. 00. I think I spent more in gas driving to the city to get it. Runs my house just fine, does dim the lights a bit if I am welding in the garage. Now with Lifepo4, I can't believe how well they work and how affordable. The last battery I bought 3.5kwhs (12.8 volts at 280amp hour) was 750 dollars though that sale was a one off, usually twice the price, but even at full retail of 1500 that is a great deal.
Tech wont save us is right, but it can save me, that is all I ask of it.

[Nearings Fault]

How long does it take your 2kw array to charge your EV, and how do you run your house while the car is chatging?

RE

as I'm sure you realize that is not a system for an electric car household.

[RE]

How long does it take your 2kw array to charge your EV, and how do you run your house while the car is chatging?

RE

as I'm sure you realize that is not a system for an electric car household.

Understood.  The question is, how big an array do you need to BOTH power a house and charge an EV?  That is what is necessary for the model being promoted here of using EV Batts as part of the total power storage system for the grid and to convert the current fleet of ICE vehicles to EVs.  Every suburban house would need an EV also to maintain the suburban living model.

RE