Quote from: 18hammers on Dec 25, 2023, 07:27 PMI think the 21st was the shortest day of the year, and the last 5 or so days have been mostly sunny, have not needed to run the generator at all. I seem to get my needed 6 kwh a day of sun. I know that can change in a instant but the 14 day forecast looks good. Very mild temps, not even burning wood, getting above 0c most days. I was out watering my Cedar's the other day. Mostly a brown Christmas here (spots of snow). 

The 21st was the shortest day, that caught me by surprise. Times flies.  Every year seems shorter.

Quote from: K-Dog on Dec 26, 2023, 12:01 AM

Quote from: 18hammers on Dec 25, 2023, 07:27 PMI think the 21st was the shortest day of the year, and the last 5 or so days have been mostly sunny, have not needed to run the generator at all. I seem to get my needed 6 kwh a day of sun. I know that can change in a instant but the 14 day forecast looks good. Very mild temps, not even burning wood, getting above 0c most days. I was out watering my Cedar's the other day. Mostly a brown Christmas here (spots of snow). 

The 21st was the shortest day, that caught me by surprise. Times flies.  Every year seems shorter.

Every day is shorter, as a percentage of the total number of days you have been alive.  Seems insignificant, but if you think of years when you were a kid, a year seemed like a very long time.  At 10, another year was 10% of your lifetime.  At 50, another year is just 2%.

When I was a kid in the 70s watching TV shows made in the 50s, stuff like Leave it to Beaver seemed like ancient history.  Now in 2023, 2003 seems like yesterday.

Age changes your perception of time.

RE

No doubt age changes perception. 

It also does not seem cold enough to be this late in the year.  By now an endless rain of winter should be upon Seattle.  But today it is 44 degrees and sunny.  This is not the same Seattle I moved from Minneapolis to almost fifty years ago.  For decades the pattern was clear.  Endless rain with a couple or three weeks of snow in midwinter.  Very predictable, but things are much more random now.  I think it has been below freezing twice.  It has been cold, but not freezing.

We live in different times and it is not just the weather.

In the 70's the 50's seemed like ancient history.  Now old times are marketed $$$ so thoroughly that twenty years ago does seem like yesterday.  If in the 1970's old farts from the 1920's were still pushing old music it would have been weird.  Not so now.

Society ossified.  But nobody told me.  Social contradictions baked in the cake by cheap energy are tolerated by the satisfaction of general need.  Inequities hidden by human tribalism which ignores those who are out-group, flourish.

Money found a sweet spot and locked us down.

Well, it's true that life changed much more from 1920 to 1970 than from 1970 to 2020.  The inventions and applications of eneergy came fast and furious through the early part of the 20th century, the 2nd half was mainly expansion and refinement of those technologies. Few had cars in 1920, by 1970 they were indispensible.  Cars are still cars though, and you still can drive a 1970 Ford Mustamg around and be cool.  You couldn't drive a Model T in 1970 and be cool though.

Music changed with electrification of the Gibson Guitar in the 1950s, bringing on Rock n Roll.  Everything before was instantly obsolete.  A few AM radio stations still played Frank Sinatra and he still played in Vegas, but it was fuddy duddy music.  Today you can tune in the Rolling Stones on any Classic Rock station in the country and it sounds fine.

The only real significant difference between now and 1970 is computers and social media.  That has changed the social dynamic significantly.

RE

If the city has a power outage the store quickly sells out of generators.  The premium generator we sell puts out about 10,000 watts.  A customer told me "that is enough to power a house".  I looked at him and said to myself.  He has several daughters.

It takes two people to move that puppy.  Tesla land has big houses.  Some residents might need two generators.

As far north as you are I am amazed you can get off gas so quick.

You don't need 10Kw to power a house.  3Kw is enough.

RE

Quote from: RE on Jan 22, 2024, 06:32 AMYou don't need 10Kw to power a house.  3Kw is enough.

RE

You forget where I live.  People here do not believe in climate change.  There is a reason.  They have money.  I called it Tesla Land for a reason.

With a heat pump I would need a large size too.

People do not believe in anything unless they have a reason.  And when they want something bad enough the reasons they find depart from reality.

Yea, if you're doing home heating and cooling and cooking and charging a car with electricity, you need a lot more than 3Kw.  I would just buy an emergency propane or kerosene heater and camping stove.  Electricity just for lights, computer and refrigerator.

RE

You would, but the burbs will be buying generators.  It won't be just the Lake Mead area that will be having power interruptions.  Remember the brouhaha when John Denver tried to put in his own underground gas storage tank?

Ahead there will be no such outcry in the new wild west.  And life is good for the generator companies.


As you can see, the recent increase in level is part of normal fluctuation, and in Las Vegas the house always wins over time.  The house being mother nature here.  She rolls the dice every day.  The overall trend is clear.  The law of large numbers will kick in.  Mother natures'  house we can't leave, so she has the time.

Having a 10000 watt or even 20000 watt whole house generator to power a house is the equivalent of having a semi truck in the driveway to pick up milk. Now that is when you have an inverter with a battery bank. Average power use in a big house is roughly 500Whr/ht to 1kWr/hr. You do need that huge generator for the start up load or to run large loads simultaneously. The dedicated loads electrical panel with the critical stuff on it is a better solution. I have a 4500 watt generator at home for charging up batteries in a long outage when the panels can't keep up. It would be powerful enough  to run the heat pump, furnace fan and water pump on its own. I would not run it continuously even if I had no battery back up as the idling fuel use would be too much. Idling is where those inverter generators come in handy as they can idle down to match the load on them while maintaining perfect power then ramp up fast when something bigger comes on. Usually an inverter generator is not ideal for battery charging since you are pushing it heavy the whole time so the fuel saving qualities are not used.

QuoteEquivalent of having a semi truck in the driveway to pick up milk.

That is how some people roll -  Or how Trumpers do prepping.


$2299.99 Was $2499.99 <- New lower price.  9500 Watts

The colors match.



None of these people are changing their lifestyle.  They just want to be cozy when the power goes out. 

Talking about batteries to them would be cognitive overload.

Quote from: 18hammers on Feb 16, 2024, 07:36 PMI know I am rolling in power again, fell asleep with the gaming computer running and woke up to still full batteries.

If you're interested in increasing your transportation resilience, you should look into buying one of the cheap mini EV scooters wiith enough range to do your local shopping and errands and see if your solar array has enough power to keep it juiced up for weekly shopping, bank, post office type trips.  You can pick one up for as little as $4000 or so.  Mine has a 40 mile range on a charge and top speed of 15 mph.  I use it to go food shopping at the superstore and drive it right inside the store aisles picking up my food, then back inside my building to my room to unload.

If you can swing $6-10K, you can get an enclosed mini car with a range of 80-120 miles that will do 35 mph.  Too big to actually drive inside a store though.



RE

Quote from: 18hammers on Feb 19, 2024, 10:17 PMThat electric car type is in my future, I am getting there in steps, already have electric bikes, Fat tire electric bikes for the gravel roads around me, have all the spare parts to keep them running. I have started building my own electric velomobile, but not like those flimsy fiberglass ones. Mine will be the velomobile equivalent of a 79 Lincoln continental in comfort. I have the rough frame done, a exact copy of a guy named Lothar from the bike forum's. Not his new design's but of the style he was building back in 2014/15 ish. I have the belly pan to add and a domed top, the top is the bubble canopy off a De Havilland Chipmonk. Not the British canopy, but the Canadian one as shown here,  https://www.vikingair.com/viking-aircraft/dhc-1-chipmunk.

I'd love to see the design, if you could do a drawing or schematic.  I don't see fiberglass as being flimsy, it's generally a lot lighter than working with sheet metal for the body, and unless you have really good metal working experience, it's quite difficult to make the complex curves to make it aerodynamically efficient.  I did some fiberglass boat building, and it's quite easy to get any shape you want out of it.  The strength comes from the frame and chassis underneath the fiberglass.  Steel bicycle tubing makes a great frame, although aluminum tubing saves a lot of weight.  Welding much easier with steel though.

When you start the build, make some how to videos!  I'll put them up on our YouTube channel. 

RE

Quote from: RE on Feb 17, 2024, 12:03 AMIf you can swing $6-10K, you can get an enclosed mini car with a range of 80-120 miles that will do 35 mph.  Too big to actually drive inside a store though.

RE

$8k. Had 35k miles on it at purchase, was a lease. Meets all the criteria of being cheap, indestructible and more than enough range in a suburban environment. Total runnings costs to date have been a rear window wiper blade, windshield washing fluid, and a set of tires.

Keep your Tesla's you suckling at the altar of Elon sychophants! I'll take a glorified golf cart with A/C, airbags and free electrons at work!

Quote from: TDoS on Feb 20, 2024, 08:17 PM$8k. Had 35k miles on it at purchase, was a lease. Meets all the criteria of being cheap, indestructible and more than enough range in a suburban environment. Total runnings costs to date have been a rear window wiper blade, windshield washing fluid, and a set of tires.

Keep your Tesla's you suckling at the altar of Elon sychophants! I'll take a glorified golf cart with A/C, airbags and free electrons at work!

Nice one.   Good choice.

RE