8 ms·
All the electricity you'll need for 40 years
- ramesh31 2y agoTIL mud huts are "solarpunk" and "Pinterest worthy" so long as you're doing it in the US.
- EQYV 2y agoHonest question, why is this your reaction? Why are people on this forum so unwilling to be happy for others? I have noticed that this attitude is extremely prominent in tech. Everything is either perfect (according to the person making the judgement) or it’s utterly worthy of ridicule. I am growing very, very tired of seeing this throughout tech.
- ramesh31 2y ago>Why are people on this forum so unwilling to be happy for others? It's a particularly offensive part of white culture that fetishizes a "return to the land" while billions around the world are trapped miserably eeking out that existence with literally zero opportunity to ever have anything else. The only reason you feel "happy" for them is because you know its a cosplay charade they could walk away from at any time. Otherwise we would call this what it is; destitute poverty.
- saaaaaam 2y agoWe posted the same time. You said it better than I did! But - cosplay - 100%
- alamortsubite 2y agoIt sounds like you may be conflating wealth with consumption. What these people have, and what billions around the world do not, is financial freedom.
- dgacmu 2y agoIt would be a mistake to think their experience is anything close to that of people in poverty, regardless of their ability to walk away from it. Poverty doesn't involve affording the capital outlay for $16k of solar/battery/hardware to give you 24x7 heat, heated water, electricity, and _an electric car_. They're trying to have a developed world quality of life in a low-resource/low-cost way. In some ways, beyond average developed world quality of life: the place they're living is stinkin' gorgeous. I don't know if it's generally practical for most people or even as energy efficient as living in a modest apartment in a large city (the transportation issues around food, medicine, and necessities factor in), but it's not an uninteresting thing to explore.
- racked 2y agoSo what are these 'whites' supposed to do in your opinion, quit denying their wealth and just go live in a nice suburb, big house, big car? You propose no solution, it's only bitterness.
- saaaaaam 2y agoI suspect that the comment was provoked by the term “solarpunk”. For many people in non first world countries this sort of existence is standard - not something to be blogged about with artfully composed photos carefully edited and posted to the internet. So I guess the comment was provoked by something like that. It was certainly one of my reactions reading the piece. I also thought “oh that’s cool, I wonder how they did it” but it was very short on detail, made up for by self-congratulatory back patting. Maybe the person making the comment lives in a developing country and finds it a little jarring to see “solarpunk” cosplay.
- unethical_ban 2y ago/dismissive handwave I think you and the other person are reading far too deep into one person's contentment with a humble living space. It's clear they are safe and comfortable; that doesn't translate in any way to suggesting other places where this living style (sans electricity or safety) should just pick themselves up by their bootstraps.
- indigoabstract 2y agoLooking at the posted pictures, it seems like they're living in heaven. Good to know the panels will be good for at least 40 years. Still, I'm kind of left wondering, where will they be in 40 years. Can life really be so predictable?
- bitmasher9 2y agoYou can imagine a high probability that someone will be in the home enjoying the power generated.
- indigoabstract 2y agoYeah, that seems very likely. I just hope it will be them, instead of somebody else, as it sometimes happens when we're making plans and life is also making plans, but different plans.
- artificialprint 2y agoPeople forget that solar panels don't grow on the trees, battery packs especially have very large footprint and their manufacturing is resource intensive.
- m3kw9 2y agoThey should use potato’s as electricity source, they just need a couple hundred tone, as potato sort of grows on trees
- ximeng 2y agoFrom the article: Solar panels and batteries depend on a global supply chain and take their own toll on the environment, but the life cycle emission of solar is ~40 gCO2/kWh, 25x lower than coal's 1,000 gCO2/kWh. And buying solar fuels innovation—such as alternatives to lithium-ion batteries now on the horizon.
- artificialprint 2y agoNuclear power has a minimal carbon footprint of around 15–50 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour (gCO2/KWh). If you want to be a real hippy
- shadowpho 2y agoEverything is relative though. Bikes also don’t grow on trees but they are several orders of magnitude more green then cars.
- candiddevmike 2y agoThis seems like a "green brag" without much substance. Great that this person is privileged enough to afford solar panels, I guess. Nothing to be learned here though: no wire diagrams, placement schematics, or BoM. Just someone telling everyone how green they are.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoThe idea is the important part. The details (wiring schematics and so on) are not. The cost of solar is rapidly approaching where you’re prepaying for your energy for the rest of your life with a few thousand dollars. You can get solar panels for 10 cents/watt today, for example. That price will potentially continue to decline (historically, price has declined ~20% for every global doubling of PV manufacturing capacity). churchill’s comment provides a similar example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41965228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41965228 (2.7 year payback in Nigeria, cheaper per kWh than utility rate of 12 cents/kWh) The engineering of energy abundance and democratization of energy globally continues. That’s the story. https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/solar-panel-prices-have-fallen-by-around-20-every-time-global-capacity-doubled https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/solar-panel-prices-... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices https://www.pv-tech.org/solar-lcoe-continues-to-decrease-globally-wood-mackenzie/ https://www.pv-tech.org/solar-lcoe-continues-to-decrease-glo...
- StrangeDoctor 2y agoI think the details are actually important to the idea. Mainly this green brag doesn't seem to add up. The battery system is crucial. While there's a bit about needing to replace it in 10-20 years coming out to a $83/month, this is essentially burying the $15,000 bill coming. Also, unless their battery system is wildly over provisioned at the moment, you can't just add a bunch of new panels. Are they selling back to the grid? I don't think so, they mention grid independence wrt natural disaster. Do they have some sort of system to heat the water in the day only? Did they just take the name plate capacity of the system and multiply it by 40 years? who knows? These "details" will make anyone buying into their big idea quite frustrated. I also don't understand the part about chopping wood. Yes it's probably a idilic bit for the story, but that's almost one of the worst fuel sources. Dangerous, carcinogenic, and polluting. edit: yes in the footnotes, burning wood. Getting rid of that would be the number one way to improve their impact on the earth and their community.
- twarge 2y agoSolar allows one to prepay for power. Would be nice to see more efficient financing for it. Using solar to heat and cool, heat water and run your dryer is quite a bit more. And generally doing the HVAC efficiently requires a large investment in insulation. Those non solar costs may dominate.
- sdk77 2y agoIt's nice to have solar panels, I have them too and while they do generate even more electricity than I need, they do so in around 6 to 7 months peaking in July. So in winter, it's grid power and in summer I might need to pay to feed in the surplus. This is in the Netherlands. It's kind of sad to see all that electricity unused in summer, and knowing I could have enough for all of the winter if only there was some way to store it, all of the 1MWh..
- quailfarmer 2y agoAll modern inverters have control interfaces that allow them to fold back their power output on command, this can be set up to track feed-in rates going negative.
- spacesanjeet 2y agoIsn't there a way to sell the unused solar power to the grid in summers and during winters the grid sends back the power needed to you at a discounted price?
- sdk77 2y agoWell, until '27, I'm allowed to use the grid as a free battery, basically, this is a kind of government subsidy. But that will end, and the contracts available will be fixed price with a feed in tariff or dynamic (realtime) market price, but then prices can and have been negative during peak solar hours. A battery can solve this only for a bit, and maybe with smart algorithms it can be trading on the electricity market full time, I'm not sure if that makes enough money for the grid power in winter.. it's nice to think about though.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ccozan 2y agoor you get a battery. Is just great. I have 3.5kw solar power witha 9kwh battery. Very very seldom it switches to power line. And this is in south Germany, maybe a bit sunnier than north but still - it rains a lot/cloudy, sun is sparse.
- shadowpho 2y ago$88 amortized over 15 years is only $16k. It’s really impressive they can get it done for that much, although I suspect labor has to be free at that cost. I’d be curious what batteries they went with and how it’s organized (aka the more technical side)
- haccount 2y agoA $16k investment at 4% annual yield with quarterly payout re-invested turns into $29k at the 15 year mark. So maybe batteries and panels today feels like a good investment, but is it the best?
- beedeebeedee 2y agoThat's great. I wish we had more housing like this, especially if we could build them into little hobbit villages. I would readily live there
- churchill 2y agoI live here in Nigeria where electricity has been epileptic since I was born (I'm 23 now). Like, I live in one of the nicer suburbs in my state, but 12h of power isn't guaranteed. So, last year, I spent $7k on 8.4 KW of panels (400W * 21), an inverter, and 20KWh of batteries. It's been life-changing. I've been able to go completely off-grid. Like, I disconnected from the grid (i.e., my meter) completely. And my usage has gone up to around 50KWh daily (air conditioners, fridges, etc.) but it hums along day-after-day. That assurance that the power won't trip off while I'm on a meeting with a client has done wonders for my mental health among others. Just reliable, stable power. And, given that I used to pay $0.12 per KWh, the whole setup will pay for itself in 2.7 years. Just under two years to go.
- haccount 2y agoThis compared to my own experience shows how much location matters for these things. I live in a place with cheap and stable hydropower. There's winter time price spikes but average solar earnings compared to grid cost from solar during sunny months would be pocket change. In winter solar would give virtually nothing. The overwhelming conclusion was that instead of buying a pile of hardware to install, configure and maintain I will earn more by clicking a button that puts it as a financial investment into anything with more than 2-3% annual yield and just paying the electricity bill and reinvesting whatever is left over. I wanted to find an edge case that would make me feel smart for buying a multi kWh home battery but with the exception of a market apocalypse or the likes every outcome suggests that I just put it in dividend stock, high interest savings accounts or whatever else until either power prices increase tenfold or $/kWh for batteries drop tenfold.
- churchill 2y agoDifferent strokes for different folks. If you already have sufficiently reliable power and the savings won't beat the S&P500, then I guess sticking to the grid makes more sense. It's just the flexibility and reliability of solar I'm commenting on, especially if you live close to the equator.
- Ella-e 2y ago
- Nition 2y agoJust a note to the web designer: The footnote links don't account for the fixed header, so the page always ends up with the footnote hidden behind the header when the user clicks one. Needs an 89 pixel offset.
- skybrian 2y ago> Electric vehicles are mainstream and last longer than their gas engine counterparts, with an estimated lifespan of 200,000 miles. What's this based on? Don't many gas cars last that long? It seems like it depends very much on how well you maintain them.
- pryelluw 2y agoIt also depends on the batteries themselves. An older Nissan leaf? Doubt it. A newer Tesla? I sure hope so. Im curious as to how car batteries will be repurposed to use for energy storage. Once they degrade to the point of only holding charge for short trips, can they still be used for other scenarios that don’t require as much from them?
- stefs 2y agoThey're already used for industrial storage of surplus solar- and wind power. I'm my opinion the big problem with electric cars are the price of replacement batteries in combination with buying used.
- ben_w 2y agoI'm not sure about averages, but given the second hand pricing I've seen: I thought after 100 or so megameters, even well maintained internal combustion engines needed maintenance of a price comparable to replacement?
- forgetfreeman 2y agoBarring weird parts supply issues rebuilding an engine should be significantly cheaper than purchasing a low mileage crate replacement. Same with transmissions.
- warble 2y ago300k on my Toyota right now. Most modern ICE engines should last 200k with no problems. EVs (other than the battery) should last a million miles. Even the batteries are turning out to last longer than everyone expected, ignoring some notable notable failures.
- quailfarmer 2y agoThis is cool, and I wish I had a setup like that, but the premise seems a bit hollow. Do they grow all the food they consume? What about the energy needed to produce the electric car, host the Substack? What about when they get sick? Do they stay off-grid, or do they go to a modern hospital, which can only exist because of urban industrial buildup. It’s cool to live off grid, but solarpunk-libertarianism is a vibe, not a meaningful policy direction for modern society
- golemiprague 2y ago[dead]
- coumbaya 2y agoI wish regulations where more lax in France. It was a battle with the town council to install 3.2kw of solar panels on the ground, I want to install 10 more but it looks like the ground option which is cheap will not be approved, I would have to out them on my roof which is costly and is not true south (and arguably, more visible).
- racked 2y agoWhat are their reasons for not allowing it? Sounds stupid on many levels to forbid it.
- coumbaya 2y agoBasically it's zoning laws, to not add permanent structures onto agricultural lands, but yeah it's stupid because this is for solar panels without foundations so I don't see the harm. I need to get an appointment with them, see if I can change their minds.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoPlease consider a blog post and posting it here detailing your journey if you don't mind.
- Animats 2y agoAverage US home power consumption: 30 KWh/day. Assuming an average of 4 solar hours per day, you would need a solar system capacity of approximately 7.5 kW to 12.5 kW. Individual solar panels produce 250-400 watts. So, conservatively, 50 panels. Installed, that's currently about $25,000, including inverter but not battery backup. Battery backup will cost maybe $15,000 more. So, the whole installation is about $40,000. This is with no grid connection, power sales, or incentives. Not too bad. Costs about the same as a car. Median US house price is $412,300.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoDid you factor in 30% federal tax credit? https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/homeowners-guide-federal-tax-credit-solar-photovoltaics https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/homeowners-guide-federal-t...
- Animats 2y agoNo.
- nightski 2y agoIn my state electricity costs about $0.089/kWh. We spend about $100/mo on electricity total which comes out almost exactly to your 30kWh/day figure (with a $23.15 connection charge included). Invested that 40k would conservatively cover over 2x our electricity bill without touching the principal (inflation adjusted). That's a pretty hard sell for solar. Obviously incentives will improve things but it just seems less financially risky to use grid power.
- bdhdbebebeb 2y ago10 years ago for me math didn't add up for batteries and offgrid but it did add up for solar. Offgrid added up if you are already offgrid so that ongrid becomes a big expense when comparing.
- fred_is_fred 2y agoThat’s where my math went. 30k- 12 years to get back to the investment. 30k in the s&p is worth a lot more than 30k…