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Family Values posted:We still hate Elon Musk though, right? I wouldn't want to make excuses for the political leanings of only one favored sector of the energy industry. I don't think that anyone here really gives a poo poo about the political leanings of the executives that push various energy-related products (with the exception of one poster)
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May 4, 2015 18:13
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QuarkJets posted:I don't think that anyone here really gives a poo poo about the political leanings of the executives that push various energy-related products (with the exception of one poster) If musk has a good product then people should buy it. Doesn't stop me from actually disliking the man, or wishing someone else would compete with him and win, or wishing he'd stop showing up on the news with dumb ideas like pneumatic tube rail. Being a billionaire businessman doesn't mean you're immune to people disliking your idiot politics.
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May 4, 2015 18:22
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Re: the Tesla Powerwall, I was curious to see, hypothetically, how much money you'd save just from buying electricity when it's cheaper. I'm going to ignore solar panels for a minute and the effects of mass adoption (if everyone got batteries and started buying electricity when it was cheaper, residential demand would probably flatten out as a function of time - there would be increased demand when it was cheaper, raising the price, and well...) In his presentation he mentioned that the battery would allow you to buy energy when it's cheapest, store it, then use it when electricity is more expensive. Let's assume that this works perfectly: you are able to buy all of your electricity when it's cheapest, compared to the normal use case, where you're typically buying electricity when demand is higher, say at the maximum price to give the biggest advantage to the Powerwall. A quick Google for hourly electricity prices brings me to this page which shows that normally, prices vary between ~4 cents/kWh to 16 cents/kWh, though sometimes there are higher fluctuations, up to 40-45 cents/kWh. Let's assume that, on average, you're looking at 4 cents/kWh when electricity is cheapest and 24 cents/kWh when it's most expensive. In 2013 the average household used 10908 kWh for the year. If you consistently buy electricity when it's most expensive, you'd spend $2618/yr vs $436/yr, so using the Powerwall would save you $2200/yr, quite cost effectively. If you ignore the large peaks and assume 16 cents/kWh as the maximum price, you get $1745/yr, so a $1300 savings a year. One Powerwall would pay for itself in 2-3 years, though if you needed two it would take 5-6 years. Obviously you're not only buying electricity when it's most expensive so this is a pretty optimistic estimate. If you account for having solar panels, you can see even bigger savings since you won't need to buy as many kWh from the grid. I think it's also interesting to think about what would happen if everyone adopted this technology and set them up to buy electricity when it was cheaper - wouldn't residential demand pretty much completely flatten out as people's systems bought electricity at night, increasing night time demand and decreasing day time demand, thus pushing demand and prices toward some average? Then, ironically, there would be no benefit to using these systems without some solar capacity since the grid price of electricity would be the same over time.
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May 4, 2015 18:45
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Phayray posted:Re: the Tesla Powerwall, I was curious to see, hypothetically, how much money you'd save just from buying electricity when it's cheaper. I'm going to ignore solar panels for a minute and the effects of mass adoption (if everyone got batteries and started buying electricity when it was cheaper, residential demand would probably flatten out as a function of time - there would be increased demand when it was cheaper, raising the price, and well...) But if that happened then prices would be lower for everybody (and the grid safer and more reliable).
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May 4, 2015 18:57
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Phayray posted:
Yes, it's a form of arbitrage, which works until everyone figures out what you've figured out and then prices even out. See also Sabermetrics. http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/30/tesla-powerwall-battery-economics-almost-there/#UpdatedCost quote:Tentative Conclusion: The battery is right on the verge of being cost effective to buy across most of the US for day/night arbitrage. And it’s even more valuable if outages come at a high economic cost. But the bigger deal is at the utility end of things, not the home: http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/14/energy-storage-about-to-get-big-and-cheap/#Grid quote:But the dropping price of storage isn’t inherently biased towards consumers. Utility operators can deploy storage as well, Two recent studies have assessed the economics of just that. And both find it compelling. $250/kwh is a big deal, even if nobody except rich greens actually installs one in their house.
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May 4, 2015 18:59
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Replacing peakers with near-grid-end batteries seems like a smart application. I have no concept of the long term cost projection comparisons, but as a theory it sounds like a good solution to a seemingly necessary evil.
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May 4, 2015 19:06
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I agree, utility side power storage makes more sense. There's nothing wrong with home storage, but people usually forget the 2k inverter that'd you need to factor into the cost of the system. Of course, if you have solar panels you already have that, but for just buying power when it's cheep it's a cost you need to add into your calculations. This is why I'd want the dimensions of the power pack instead of the wall. I mean, he showed the thing off. I really don't like market speak. Don't tell me batteries are bad, show me the numbers. Like, real numbers, not pixels on a map. Either way, anything that reduces our need for peak plants is good. I don't care if it's from battery stored wind, solar, hamsters, or nuclear, they're all better choices than peakers. Got to admit I never thought about the situation in countries with out the ability to sell solar power to the grid during the day, though. I tend to usually focus on the US situation. edit: Another nice thing about the more grid based solutions is that the power wall is kinda limp when it comes to continuous output, so you'd need multiple walls installed for that reason alone. A big grid based solution would have less of a problem with that. Killer-of-Lawyers fucked around with this message at 19:14 on May 4, 2015 |
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May 4, 2015 19:07
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A lot of the issue with trying to use it for arbitrage is that vast swathes of the country have no residential day/night cost differences to use it for, and several places that have it at all only have it for limited times of the year. And some places don't even offer it for commercial properties, only massive industrial facilities which normally have such a draw that no battery banks could help much (though perhaps you might make an industrial facility that does nothing more than hold the batteries, charge them over night and release to the grid during the day for stabilization).
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May 4, 2015 19:11
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Nintendo Kid posted:A lot of the issue with trying to use it for arbitrage is that vast swathes of the country have no residential day/night cost differences to use it for, and several places that have it at all only have it for limited times of the year. And some places don't even offer it for commercial properties, only massive industrial facilities which normally have such a draw that no battery banks could help much (though perhaps you might make an industrial facility that does nothing more than hold the batteries, charge them over night and release to the grid during the day for stabilization). They seem pretty transportable and modular. Add more capacity seasonally as required? Ramp up or down as necessary.
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May 4, 2015 19:16
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Pander posted:They seem pretty transportable and modular. Add more capacity seasonally as required? Ramp up or down as necessary. What are you thinking of for seasonal capacity that they could handle and for what kind of owner? Where are they getting kept/who's owning them "off season"?
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May 4, 2015 19:30
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I think you guys are thinking about two different thing. There's a difference in the economics of power storage for myself personally, and for Encor or whatever power company.
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May 4, 2015 19:32
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:I think you guys are thinking about two different thing. There's a difference in the economics of power storage for myself personally, and for Encor or whatever power company. Well that's the thing, the Tesla packs are at least nominally designed around being for an end user, but in reality they'd be more useful for a power company or similar, outside of a minority of places that actually have residential electric price changes from hour to hour.
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May 4, 2015 19:48
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No, the walls are designed for end users. The packs are the big box things that he never gave any stats on besides the amount of power one could hold and that they were made to be modular. The walls aren't really that good, but they'd still be alright for people with solar panels. Going off the grid with them, or completely buying only cheep power is going to suck, since you'd need a few of the things to make sure you can boil and egg and use the toaster at the same time.
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May 4, 2015 19:51
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What areas provide electricity to residential consumers at a reduced cost off peak? I don't think my meter cares what time of day it is, it just cares how much I use. Without a alternative energy setup the tesla batteries would be a feel good option only, so I can look good to my green friends. I guess it would be useful to the power grid, your welcome utility company, have some profits on me.
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May 4, 2015 19:56
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Dahn posted:What areas provide electricity to residential consumers at a reduced cost off peak? I don't think my meter cares what time of day it is, it just cares how much I use. At a glance, Glendale, California offers it as an option: http://www.glendaleca.gov/government/departments/glendale-water-and-power/rates/residential-electric-rates And so does this utility that appears to operate in Arizona: http://www.srpnet.com/prices/home/tou.aspx
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May 4, 2015 20:02
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Dahn posted:What areas provide electricity to residential consumers at a reduced cost off peak? I don't think my meter cares what time of day it is, it just cares how much I use. Some power companies used to support the installation of two lines and two meters, with one meter being an off-peak one. The off-peak meter would shut down that input during peak hours, and was usually used for high-power duties like electric dryers, hot water heters, etc.
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May 4, 2015 20:05
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Phanatic posted:Some power companies used to support the installation of two lines and two meters, with one meter being an off-peak one. The off-peak meter would shut down that input during peak hours, and was usually used for high-power duties like electric dryers, hot water heters, etc. Also, if you have an electronic "smart meter" they can report energy use (in real time!) on a 10 or 15 minute granularity which is more than good enough for time-of-day billing.
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May 4, 2015 20:28
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Nintendo Kid posted:At a glance, Glendale, California offers it as an option: http://www.glendaleca.gov/government/departments/glendale-water-and-power/rates/residential-electric-rates Cool looks like there might be some places that could get some real benefit from the batteries. I am in the ERCOT region, so not a very "green energy" freindly area.
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May 4, 2015 22:59
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Phayray posted:I think it's also interesting to think about what would happen if everyone adopted this technology and set them up to buy electricity when it was cheaper - wouldn't residential demand pretty much completely flatten out as people's systems bought electricity at night, increasing night time demand and decreasing day time demand, thus pushing demand and prices toward some average? Then, ironically, there would be no benefit to using these systems without some solar capacity since the grid price of electricity would be the same over time. The larger problem is that you can't just switch off a power plant, and that electricity is so much cheaper overnight on any time of use plan is because it needs to operate to handle peak capacity at all times, resulting in large amounts of energy just being wasted, and with energy storage so far being impractical and expensive, it's just used to do pointless things to waste it like pumping water uphill. I've heard that the overnight electricity waste alone would be enough for everyone to charge a personal EV, but I'm not sure that's entirely accurate as I haven't heard that repeated much or seen a good source on that in some time. Regardless, it's a large amount of electricity that is wasted, and when peak use is too high with no reserve to draw from, brownouts increase and general grid stability take a nosedive. Battery packs that contain enough power to hold a few kWh and serve as a backup, reserve, and comparatively cheap energy storage for residences have some microeconomic appeal in the short-to-mid term as time of use meters are becoming available, but power companies will almost certainly be buying massive amounts of batteries for load balancing as well as the price drops, and the entire grid will be much more stable and efficient for it. Even if time of use rates just don't really matter anymore after the grid is upgraded with smarter load balancing and large storage arrays owned by the utility working in concert with local premises arrays, that kind of storage will be vital for making maximum use of dirty power sources that output at a constant rate (coal, nuclear) as well as harnessing the less reliable throughput of renewable energy such as solar (and wind I guess but gently caress wind) with peak efficiency. More than likely, over time a local power storage array will just be a thing that the power company provides and maintains for you, and they will just own and manage it and release promotional materials about how you'll never have a power outage again or something, not too dissimilar from how most internet or telecom providers treat the equipment that bridges their network and the premise now. Maybe at most they will offer different sizes for a different monthly rate, but especially as cost and size drops they might just go by historical usage/square footage and you don't really have to ever think about it.
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May 4, 2015 23:09
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Dahn posted:Cool looks like there might be some places that could get some real benefit from the batteries. ERCOT is http://www.ercot.com/news/press_releases/show/26611 If you browse their site you can even get excell spreadsheets on the hourly output and everything. Also Ercot has a solid nuclear power baseline as well. http://www.ercot.com/content/news/presentations/2015/ERCOT_Quick_Facts_12715.pdf There is also a report on the various future scenarios for wind/solar/natural gas, and water impact analysis you can find as well if you want to look into the charts. Long story short, it all relies on the price of gas, wind is already viable in Texas with the right conditions, solar will probably be by 2022. edit: And of course, you can search and see if anyone does any indexed rates in your area. A lot of plans tend to have a fixed rate. It was pretty popular when gas prices were declining and companies probably made bank on it. Still, there are options. edit2: Boten Anna posted:making maximum use of dirty power sources that output at a constant rate (coal, nuclear) You are a bad person and you should feel bad about yourself. Killer-of-Lawyers fucked around with this message at 23:40 on May 4, 2015 |
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May 4, 2015 23:29
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Here is PG&E's plans: http://pge.com/en/myhome/saveenergymoney/plans/index.page BTW, the tiered plan rates increased by 20% from 2014; they really want people to move over to time of use plans: Tier 1 was 0.13627 / kWh in 2014, is now 0.16352 Tier 2 was 0.15491 / kWh in 2014, is now 0.18673 e: people talking upthread about 0.04 / kWh 
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May 5, 2015 00:04
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Wasn't Arizona about to significantly reduce the price of power provided by consumer solar panels? Hawaii electric companies were trying to do the same thing until the state stepped in last year. I imagine a battery pack would be very useful in a situation where the power company is paying pennies on the dollar to consumers with solar systems
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May 5, 2015 00:09
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QuarkJets posted:Wasn't Arizona about to significantly reduce the price of power provided by consumer solar panels? Hawaii electric companies were trying to do the same thing until the state stepped in last year. I imagine a battery pack would be very useful in a situation where the power company is paying pennies on the dollar to consumers with solar systems It would. A battery system makes sense if you're going to have panels on your home. If it makes sense to go with TESLA or stick with the more traditional batteries is really for the consumer to figure out on their own. One of the biggest problems a lot of high solar states are running into is backflow, so I can see why power companies would want to stop paying much money during the middle of the day. They don't need the power then, it's causing them issues back at the plant they get so much in Hawaii. Grid based storage could help a lot too. Spin down the power plants during the midday, charge up the local batteries, then discharge them instead of having spinning reserve during peak times. Of course, we'd need to change the rules for spinning reserves to do that.
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May 5, 2015 00:16
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Is there a way to calculate what the cost and effeciency of Tesla's product will be in 3 years? Also does this qualify for Federal Subsidy similar to Solar Panel, and Green fitting your home? I am super excited about this product, but I live in Chicago so no sell back. Also, what's to prevent the electric company from just stealing electricity from the battery and your solar panels ? Meaning any home that did convert would basically just be a mini station for the Electric Company?
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May 5, 2015 00:20
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Boten Anna posted:The larger problem is that you can't just switch off a power plant, and that electricity is so much cheaper overnight on any time of use plan is because it needs to operate to handle peak capacity at all times, resulting in large amounts of energy just being wasted, and with energy storage so far being impractical and expensive, it's just used to do pointless things to waste it like pumping water uphill. I've heard that the overnight electricity waste alone would be enough for everyone to charge a personal EV, but I'm not sure that's entirely accurate as I haven't heard that repeated much or seen a good source on that in some time. Regardless, it's a large amount of electricity that is wasted, and when peak use is too high with no reserve to draw from, brownouts increase and general grid stability take a nosedive. Yeah, I met a guy who actually built one of those stored water hydroelectric things. Not only does he profit off running the water through generators at peak hours, but he also sold all the granite the tunnels were cut through, so setting it up actually cost negative money.
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May 5, 2015 00:21
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Hollismason posted:Is there a way to calculate what the cost and effeciency of Tesla's product will be in 3 years? Also does this qualify for Federal Subsidy similar to Solar Panel, and Green fitting your home? There's a lot of factors in play. Will the Gigafactory actually reduce the cost of lithium cells, or is the cell already so popular that it's near it's price floor? How effective are the packs going to be in the 5-10 year term? The last question is easy. If you have the batteries installed as part of a home solar system then the feds will give you 30%. Some states have their own rebates ontop of that, but this is only if you're doing it in tandem with solar cells. Hollismason posted:Also, what's to prevent the electric company from just stealing electricity from the battery and your solar panels ? Meaning any home that did convert would basically just be a mini station for the Electric Company? What, you mean like how people steal cable? I don't think the power company is going to come over to your home and try and steal power from you. You kind of have to set things up with them to put power out onto the grid anyways, and if you're worried you can just pull the knife switch outside your home.
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May 5, 2015 00:24
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I am not a electrical engineer and understand how nothing electricity wise works. However I am excited by this developement as I plan on buying a home soon and want to go green with the home. Unfortunately for me , Chicago does not require the Electrical Company to pay for excess you put back into the grid.  I was more interested in the 2nd and 3rd generation of these and what we could see in the future. I'm also interested in just completely being not reliant on Gas and Electricity , so this seems like a way to power a Electrical Furnace and keep costs down in winter, but there is less sunlight so who knows. Also, I'm more interested in how the Chinese are going to steal the gently caress out of this and use it.
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May 5, 2015 00:29
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They'd have a hell of a market stealing the solar panels back from us after they sell them. I think it could work. The solar oruburos.
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May 5, 2015 00:29
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There's already huge lobby groups against the Electrical Companies buying back electricity, they kind of won in this area. I specficially meant whats to stop the company from drawing power from your home and that in turn draws power from the battery.
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May 5, 2015 00:31
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Hollismason posted:There's already huge lobby groups against the Electrical Companies buying back electricity, they kind of won in this area. I specficially meant whats to stop the company from drawing power from your home and that in turn draws power from the battery. You can just isolate your home completely from the grid based on how full the batteries are. You'd need enough batteries to cover your household peak, or some other fancy stuff, but yeah, it's doable.
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May 5, 2015 00:33
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Hollismason posted:I am not a electrical engineer and understand how nothing electricity wise works. However I am excited by this developement as I plan on buying a home soon and want to go green with the home. To evaluate how much sense that makes, you need to define what 'going green' means. quote:I was more interested in the 2nd and 3rd generation of these and what we could see in the future. I'm also interested in just completely being not reliant on Gas and Electricity , so this seems like a way to power a Electrical Furnace and keep costs down in winter, but there is less sunlight so who knows. What? Unless you have a *shitload of solar power* (or you live in a place where your electricity comes from hydroelectric), you're not "keeping costs down" by using electric heat. If you want reasonably environmentally-friendly and inexpensive heat, use natural gas. And this isn't a way to power anything. It's not a power source, it's a way to store power temporarily.
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May 5, 2015 00:37
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If you want to heat using electric power, get a heat pump.
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May 5, 2015 00:41
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He's in Chicago, a heat pump's not going to be much better than plain resistive heating for a lot of the year anyway.
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May 5, 2015 00:45
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Yeah there's a great program here now that Illinois offers for insulation, the first step is just insulation, but I'd like to take advantage of as many grants for Going Green as possible. I'm looking to buy a home in the next 3 to 4 years so I've been looking into a lot of the insulation costs etc.. I deal in real estate so I have a pretty good idea of what type of home I want to buy and how. So I've been paying close attention to the market. I'll probably end up saving up for a cash bid on a home that's in foreclosure. Regardless I'd like to fit for as much energy conservation as I can as I kind of feel we're going to be hurting in 10 years. Hollismason fucked around with this message at 00:52 on May 5, 2015 |
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May 5, 2015 00:50
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There's a non-powered way to heat homes using passive solar heating. It works pretty well and can help in some areas. Not sure how much it would help in Chicago versus weatherizing.
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May 5, 2015 02:31
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Yeah, coming from the design/construction industry I can say just upping insulation standards for new construction would do a huge amount of good in terms of energy use. Specially in north america, houses are insulated so poorly and windows/doors leak like crazy. It's stupid how little more proper insulation costs but home builders and buyers just gotta save those thousands because all anyone gives a poo poo about is cost per sq ft. Awesome, you saved 5k on your house that could have saved you 500-1000 a year on heating. \/ I've heard nothing but bad things about australian residential construction. It's like too hot to worry about insulation because you only need insulation for cold climates *blasts AC all day* Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 03:46 on May 5, 2015 |
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May 5, 2015 03:31
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Apparently if you think North American houses are bad, Australian homes are even worse and they haven't bothered making them better at all.
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May 5, 2015 03:42
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All Australian suburban homes are the same single storey uninsulated bricks, in slightly different colors and shapes, ad infinitum. As an addendum, the last government funded insulation scheme was roundly criticized for workplaces deaths and terrible practices, mostly because they relied on external private contractors who weren't regulated enough (They put too much faith in small business).
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May 5, 2015 04:00
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Boten Anna posted:The larger problem is that you can't just switch off a power plant, and that electricity is so much cheaper overnight on any time of use plan is because it needs to operate to handle peak capacity at all times, resulting in large amounts of energy just being wasted, and with energy storage so far being impractical and expensive, it's just used to do pointless things to waste it like pumping water uphill. I've heard that the overnight electricity waste alone would be enough for everyone to charge a personal EV, but I'm not sure that's entirely accurate as I haven't heard that repeated much or seen a good source on that in some time. Regardless, it's a large amount of electricity that is wasted, and when peak use is too high with no reserve to draw from, brownouts increase and general grid stability take a nosedive. Sure, you can just turn off a power plant. You just get the unit operator to press the red button on his desk marked "EMERGENCY TURBINE TRIP" or similar. It's usually behind a perspex or metal cover, because people get in trouble for pushing them accidentally.  More seriously, coal and gas power stations built since the 1960s are able to shut down overnight and start up again the next morning. Based on the stations I've scheduled in the past, you'd be looking at giving them between 90 and 120 minutes' notice in the morning to start up followed by a run-up to full load lasting 1-2 hours, and they can typically shut down from full load in 30 minutes. What I've had in the past is a maintenance/start-up charge from the station for incurring an additional startup, and if the price of power overnight is sufficiently low that you can make back the startup cost in terms of avoided negative dark spread capture, you turn it off overnight. If not, you either run it through at full load (if power prices are high) or at the minimum possible load (if they're low). It's really unlikely that electricity is being deliberately wasted. The grid operator is there to ensure that supply meets demand - in the case of oversupply, they'll instruct power stations to reduce generation, either by turning off completely, or by operating at less-than-flat-out load levels. By way of example, a modern 450 MW CCGT unit can typically generate anywhere between 200 MW and 450 MW, and is able to increase and decrease generation at a rate of 15 MW/min or more. An older 500 MW coal unit might be able to operate in the range 280 MW to 500 MW, with ramp rates of 10 MW/min. Given how expensive coal and gas are, it makes much more sense to generate less electricity than it does to piss it up the wall.
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May 5, 2015 05:12
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RDevz posted:Sure, you can just turn off a power plant. You just get the unit operator to press the red button on his desk marked "EMERGENCY TURBINE TRIP" or similar. It's usually behind a perspex or metal cover, because people get in trouble for pushing them accidentally. Interesting, though I imagine there are inefficiencies to ramping up/down/turning off power plants, and there's an optimal level of output that is the most efficient, much like how the Volt works, and similar to the Volt, if there were battery arrays everywhere that could store excess generation so that the power plant runs at constant peak efficiency it would be a boon. Also it makes sense that for a coal plant you could just not burn as much coal, but this isn't the case for nuclear energy and it seems like that would be where pumping water uphill to burn off excess generation, etc. would be more common.
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May 5, 2015 17:18
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