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When is Electricity Going to be an Issue?


The reason people aren't saving money and never will is because the new pricing systems use the old rates as the minimum base and then jack up the price for use during regular waking hours. If you're an owl, you might be able to save some, but if you're a regular functioning societal human being, you're getting gouged. Since the meters went in here, my costs have skyrocketted even though my usage has fallen.

Unless your a shill for the eco-terrorists and getting a cut from the installations, you can't possibly support what's being done.

Add to this windmill monstrosities being erected all over the damn place, creating electricity mostly when it's not needed, never reliably, and at 5 to 10 times the cost of traditional sources - and we're paying surrounding jurisdictions to take it from us - and you have chaos in the energy sector.
 
Fisher said:
Our base utility charge went down when they installed smart meters in my city to pass on the savings from having fewer meter readers :shrug:
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And how long ago was that? Just wait, you're probably still in the "let's suck them in" stage.
 

They're using these rates to fund infrastructure improvements that should have been funded out of the taxes everyone has been paying for decades but it's sexier to give your local opera house a facelift than to replace powerlines.
 
Harshaw said:
OK, then demonstrate the math on that.




Doesn't have a thing to do with what I said.
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Just went over this in a thread recently.

Once in the vehicle, ICEs are 15-20% efficient. Electrics 80%+. So four times more efficient.

There are "losses" in gasoline energy delivery that are NEVER included in anti-electric propaganda.

You have to find a well, drill it, pump out the oil, drag it to a refinery, refine it, and drag it to the gas station.

And the primary reason for a "smart grid" is to reduce "overproduction" of electricity. The way its done now, large amounts of energy are generated "just in case", to avoid brownouts/blackouts. If it ISN'T used it just goes to waste. This waste is counted as losses.

Gallon for gallon, a central power plant is much more efficient than a car. No accel/decel cycles. Think diesel/electric trains. There is no way in hell your F-250 is going to haul a ton anywhere near as far on a gallon of fuel.

And electric car banks represent grid storage, which would reduce "losses" substantially.

They still have a way to go, but if 47% is lost in generation/transmission and efficiency is four times greater once its in the vehicle, that's still twice as efficient.
 
I've done that 2x. I'm still required to be grid tied in one spot and pay for a connection I don't use. I'm not worried about me. We already spend billions subsidizing utilities for the leftist voters who expect everyone else to work for their hand outs. This is going to exasperate that budget. I enjoy solar power. I've always been intrigued by self sufficiency and will continue. And yes my back up power is a propane generator but I'm going diesel. I can produce bio diesel now, but am afraid if I do too much they'll want me to pay their fuel tax on it.



Fisher said:
Then buy you a solar kit or propane generator and unplug yourself from Da Man's evil thumb.
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CanadaJohn said:
Ask yourself, what percentage of the population both lives in single family homes and plans on staying in that home for the twenty plus years it takes for an "upgrade" to green power sources to start paying dividends?
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Good afternoon, CJ! :2wave:

They don't tell people about that part of it! :thumbdown: And for those of us that don't have constant sunshine, like those of us who have had two months of almost daily rain here in NE Ohio, that won't work out real well when we want to turn a light on, or make a piece of toast! Sheesh!
 

Good afternoon Lady P. - All true!

I'm going to have to check out for a bit before I have a stroke talking about this!!
 
CanadaJohn said:
And how long ago was that? Just wait, you're probably still in the "let's suck them in" stage.
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3 years ago maybe. I do not recall exactly. We get our electric through the city which buys its credits wherever they can find it the cheapest. For decades, our city residents made out like bandits because the city signed some long-term contract at a fixed rate that was slightly higher than the market at the time before the prices skyrocketed so we were getting electric at well below market until those contracts expired about a decade or so ago. They are now looking into investing in building their own production facilities jointly with others in order to use the credits to lower prices.

Natural gas on the other hand--well the city pretty much checks your prostate with a telephone pole every month in the winter with that one. They so overbilled us that they were forced to refund a huge chunk of our payments as credits to avoid being tarred and feathered when it became public knowledge that we had be gouged.
 
CanadaJohn said:
Ask yourself, what percentage of the population both lives in single family homes and plans on staying in that home for the twenty plus years it takes for an "upgrade" to green power sources to start paying dividends?
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Its actually less now, but think about it this way.

Does it take twenty years to pay a dividend, or are you buying twenty years of power in advance at a set rate?

Your solar power will never be subject to wars in the middle east or utility gouging. You won't be subject to control over how you use the power you generate. It yours to do with as you see fit.
 
What if...? said:
Just went over this in a thread recently.

Once in the vehicle, ICEs are 15-20% efficient. Electrics 80%+. So four times more efficient.
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Electrics may be 80% efficient in using electricity, but that's not the problem. The problem is that electricity generation is inefficient. The electricity reaching the car is in NO WAY 100% of the energy in the fossil fuel, and for the electric car to be "four times more effcient" in the way you describe it, it would have to be.

You need to account for the losses in electricity generation and transmission, and you're not doing that.


There are "losses" in gasoline energy delivery that are NEVER included in anti-electric propaganda.

You have to find a well, drill it, pump out the oil, drag it to a refinery, refine it, and drag it to the gas station.
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I just addressed that above. You have to do all the same things to get the fuel to the power plant.

They still have a way to go, but if 47% is lost in generation/transmission and efficiency is four times greater once its in the vehicle, that's still twice as efficient.
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Yeah, well, the efficiency of petroleum power plants is more like 34-36%, and that's generation, not transmission.
 
CalGun said:
When I started solar the small system I could afford was $1600 it's now under $900. Only the city permit for me was $380 and is now $1,500. So govt is doing its best at making solar ineffective.
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It would probably be more accurate that politicians are doing it for their sponsors.

But permitting is reasonable for grid tied systems due to the danger to utility workers from.solar systems backfeeding when they're working on the lines, etc. House sized banks are also hazardous. Fire and explosion hazards. Manageable, but not unreasonable to fall under permitting/codes.
 

We don't have mandatory smart meters here yet, but they're talking about it...a lot! Nobody wants rows of windmills in their backyard! And to make it worse, they kill birds that help keep the insect population down! The treehuggers are only about .004 percent of the population, but they scream a lot, which gets the publicity! Where do they think the food comes from that they buy from the store? Idiots! All this to make a select few get wealthier than they already are? :wow:
 

Who cares? That doesn't make it a 'RIGHT'.
 
I totally understand that element, but we can't have a system in a city that is not grid tied. We can't to a permitted system unless its grid tied. The inverter costs a good deal more for a grid tied system too so the burden is sickening when all you want to do is be free of a utility bill - and you can't.


 
This is not the same for every location, and here in CA I pay .16 a kilowatt hour.

A 4 panel system including 920 watt solar panels (230 ea) and 1k inverter can be installed to provide ample "base" power to a home for just under $1,000 if you can DIY. I would suspect you can hire someone to install it for $250 if you can't DIY. This would provide a real basic load for a home, but more importantly it would provide over 20 years a total of 26,000 kilowatt hours of power here in CA. At .16 each that is a $4,160 return on $1,000 over 20 years. Not bad - its what we call "pairity" meaning the cost of a solar investment is equal to other investments. If I invested $1,000 in stocks over 20 years I should hope to enjoy a $4,000 total at the end of 20 years. Its incredible solar has gotten so cheap that it has parity with a solid stock investment and I'm not even counting on increased utility rates.

BUT SADLY I have to tie such a system into the grid (government mandate). That requires a $1,000 inverter and a $1,500 permit. That $2,500 increases my "investment" to $3,500. In 20 years that should be worth $14,000 and my solar system will have saved me only $4,000 so the parity is GONE.

If the enviro's want clean energy, renewable energy, solar energy - get GOVERNMENT out of the WAY and we can do it.
 

Dispensing the fuel to the cars doesn't add energy inefficiency. You have to pump the fuel the same number of times either way.[/QUOTE]

The methods for delivering fuel to a power plant are a lot more efficient than the delivery of fuel to gas stations, and fossil fuel power plants are more energy effecient than internal combustion engines (35% vs 26%).

In all honesty, there are enough moving parts and energy transformations in both processes that I find it very hard to believe that taking half a million combustion engines off the road and replacing them with electric motors will result in a huge difference in energy cost. At that point it's up to us as a people to figure out how to generate and distribute electricity more efficiently.

Ultimately, I think micro-generation is what will tip the scales towards making electric cars significantly more environmentally friendly.
 
TacticalEvilDan said:
The methods for delivering fuel to a power plant are a lot more efficient than the delivery of fuel to gas stations,
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What are those?

and fossil fuel power plants are more energy effecient than internal combustion engines (35% vs 26%).
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Then factor in loss through transmission and the inefficiency of electric motors.


Why are you limiting it to "half a million"?
 
CalGun said:
An electric car uses a similar amount of juice as a home over a day. Each electric car is like adding a house to our limited supply.
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Really? According to who?


You're not making any sense. Even if the rich were the only ones who could afford to buy electric cars, they'd be paying for the electricity to charge the batteries at the same premium rate as everyone else paid for their household appliances. They would be paying their own freight, not getting their druthers on the backs of the poor.

CalGun said:
We subsidize these cars with tax gifts and the only ones buying them are rich people. We're adding a burden to the grid the poor will pay for.
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You're ignoring the fact that technology gets cheaper over time. Even if your average American family can't afford an electric car now (which I doubt), it won't be long before they can.
 
CalGun said:
In my location the utility is the govt. we have a utility district ie govt agency. I realize most have regulated private utilities. Govt enjoys great control over them.
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Okay. I'm still not convinced that the government can decide what temperature it's appropriate for your house to be.
 
sawyerloggingon said:
We already have brown outs during heat waves, just imagine if everyone was plugging cars in too.
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Once they get the temperature and cost down in fuel cells they'll probably be the next power source for electric cars and possibly urban housing. They're efficient, clean and will use much less resources, especially if they develop one which uses a clean abundant fuel source.
 

Maybe in Canada, but in New York the government and the utility company are not the same.
 
electric cars are dumb for so many reasons
The first question I always like to pose to the enviro-mental wackjobs is:
where is all this power going to come from and how are you going to pay to upgrade the grid to deliver it?

additional reasons why battery powered cars are stupid, available upon request
 
Why does everyone look to Tesla as the measure and future of electric cars? How many Americans can afford a Tesla?

There are low cost electric cars out there and the future of electric cars in in those, not in the Tesla, which is what rich people buy to prove they are enlightened.
 
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