sxates

9 ms·

31.
by sxates 5y ago
Bay Area California. December has been highs in the 40s-50s, lows 30s-40s (Fahrenheit). I definitely benefit from living in a place that's not extremely cold or hot, which reduces our energy needs.
32.
by sxates 5y ago
You just moved the goal posts from "impossible" to "not economically feasible" - those aren't the same thing. I agree, economically, it's very difficult. We need governments to help with the cost, because it wi
33.
by sxates 5y ago
OP here - we upgraded to 400 amp service, but 200 would still be sufficient for us. I just have a hard time saying no when 'overkill' costs only 10% more.
34.
by sxates 5y ago
I'm in the Bay Area. Net electric bills for the year are $0 or <$0. Hard to compare to 'before' because the EVs were added after solar, but my next door neighbor with a somewhat larger house, no EVs, and both gas and elect
35.
by sxates 5y ago
I don't! But that was also true when we had gas.
36.
by sxates 5y ago
I agree that heat is more challenging in climates like yours. But it's not impossible. Extreme insulation and smart energy management goes a long way (check out passive houses), and if thermal is really needed natural gas is not our on
37.
by sxates 5y ago
The cost is enormous for older houses. It's prohibitive for most people, thus my advocacy for incentives. We did a lot of the work as part of larger renovations, but I'd expect for most homes the cost to convert all the gas applia
38.
by sxates 5y ago
The main thing I'm looking at is eliminating CO2 emissions as best I can. I'm not in control of them all, but where I am in control I'm working to eliminate. Bottom line is that we need to get emissions to zero as fast as pos
39.
by sxates 5y ago
I have 2 Tesla Powerwalls. I'm not too worried about the fire risk, as I haven't heard of any case of powerwall fire. The city seems worried about it though, my permits and inspections all have to go through the fire department wh
40.
by sxates 5y ago
Sibling comment about electric loads is accurate - we had 100amp service which was insufficient (though we almost made it - we added an ADU (also all electric) which needed it's own big breaker and we didn't have space for that -
41.
by sxates 5y ago
The benefits of electrification are not limited to those with local solar production. But obviously if you are generating your own power, running everything on that same fuel type has big benefits.
42.
by sxates 5y ago
I haven't had the batteries long enough (just a couple months at this point - took more than a year to get them) to work that into our habits in all seasons. I expect for 6+ months of the year the batteries will enable us to run virtua
43.
by sxates 5y ago
For the doubters - I've completely converted my 1962 house to electric over the last few years. Gas furnace > Heat pump. Gas water heater > Heat pump water heater. Gas range > Electric Oven, Induction Cooktop. Even has a heat
44.
by sxates 5y ago
My house used to have a gas furnace, gas water heater, and gas cooking. When our power was out, none of those appliances worked. Gas doesn't save you in a power outage, unless you have some kind of gas fireplace, but even then a widesp
45.
by sxates 5y ago
No doubt this car would have weighed a fraction of what a modern Prius weighs.
46.
by sxates 5y ago
Has anyone found info on power consumption? Still 100+ W?
47.
by sxates 5y ago
Quick anecdote. I bought my first house in Garland TX for $119,000 in 2003. 3 beds, 2.5 baths, a 'not bad' neighborhood. My wife was a teacher and we could afford it just on her income. Looked up that house recently and it was for
48.
by sxates 5y ago
Its a little weird that the catastrophe described is about the warheads, not the loss of the whole crew. Though I'm sure it's about a billion dollar loss of hardware as well.
49.
by sxates 5y ago
It sucks to lose something you always had and took for granted. I wonder what the reverse situation would look like - if everyone on the planet had easy access to high speed satellite internet, and astronomers came along and insisted we had
50.
by sxates 5y ago
How would Florida enforce this for a company that isn't based in Florida? Or for deplatforming politicians outside Florida? I don't see how they have jurisdiction here.
51.
by sxates 5y ago
Why is the 5 year payback critical, as opposed to 7 or 8? You're still coming out ahead.
52.
by sxates 5y ago
I actually talked about this in a previous comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25283461
53.
by sxates 5y ago
My house in California is peaking around 70kWh this time of year (April, 14kw system), well more than we're using. I can charge my tesla during the day and still be exporting to the grid. Most afternoons my house is probably powering e
54.
by sxates 5y ago
Potentially on descent, but I think it's a much smaller potential benefit in an airplane, and perhaps tricky because you don't want to extract so much energy that you lose speed and stall.
55.
by sxates 5y ago
Would someone call Michael Lewis and make sure he's looking into this story?
56.
by sxates 5y ago
Those intros are where a lot of the recurring inside jokes originate, don't skip them!
57.
by sxates 6y ago
I've certainly wondered many times why we don't wire homes for DC right now. Almost everything in my house runs on DC, and the Solar Panels on the roof generate DC, but it gets converted to AC in between with losses on both sides
58.
by sxates 6y ago
Yes, I’d watch this movie.
59.
by sxates 6y ago
To be fair, I think setting up a raspberry pi or an AWS instance isn't 'mom friendly' either. Still more friction than Facebook, which this is positioning itself against.
60.
by sxates 6y ago
Thanks for sharing this link, I had been looking for something like this!

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