zbrozek

66 ms·

841.
by zbrozek 6y ago
A panel upgrade alone is in the neighborhood of $5k. And if you have underground service and need new wires, that's another $25k.
842.
by zbrozek 6y ago
You've misinterpreted the proposal. It's $10/mo per installed kilowatt-peak of solar panels behind the meter. There's _another_ fixed charge that is more reasonable.
843.
by zbrozek 6y ago
And this is why the utility companies are trying to shut it down or make it uneconomical. NEM 3.0 in CA, for example, has a rent-seeking provision where the power company gets to bill the rate-payer for assets the rate-payer owns, even if n
844.
by zbrozek 6y ago
Beware NEM 3.0. Note that the CA utilities are working to try to keep milking you even if you have solar. The most loathsome part of it is that the utilities are trying to charge you $10/month/kilowatt-peak for the array you own,
845.
by zbrozek 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Costs
846.
by zbrozek 6y ago
Abusive of what? Excessive by what standard? If someone is sold a plan without limits then what's the problem here?
847.
by zbrozek 6y ago
Arch had a perfectly serviceable installer way back in the day. I used it regularly maybe 15-ish years ago. It was removed. I'm very glad to see another one pop up.
848.
by zbrozek 6y ago
I _do_ run opnsense in a VM and am very happy with the setup. My requirements for APs are simple but hard to satisfy. Ceiling mount, PoE, present-day-best 802.11 standard, and openwrt-capable.
849.
by zbrozek 6y ago
As a kid playing Alpha Centauri, I used to use the planet buster weapons for the same purpose.
850.
by zbrozek 6y ago
Those VRMs are not that expensive, and you can't realistically move them far away from the load without constantly under- or over-voltaging the transistors you're trying to power. Your power company does not deliver 5 volts to you
851.
by zbrozek 6y ago
I'm also glad folks are tinkering. That said, bike tires are probably not where I would expect something like this to land. I would love these to replace the tires on things like utility carts, air compressors, etc that typically end u
852.
by zbrozek 6y ago
I'd be amazed if it's that little in test equipment.
853.
by zbrozek 6y ago
https://haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/WP294.pdf This paper has some nice maps illustrating why Californians need to do some serious modeling before making electrification choices. My favorites are: Figure 2
854.
by zbrozek 6y ago
I used to captain a solar race car team. I don't really want solar panels on my car; I'd much rather have them installed as stationary infrastructure. On-vehicle there are pressures to stay compact and lightweight, which costs dur
855.
by zbrozek 6y ago
I own a mix. I absolutely love my electric leaf blower and electric chainsaw. But I own both an electric and a gas-powered string trimmer. The electric one is every bit as powerful as the gas one, and it's much nicer to use. But it doe
856.
by zbrozek 6y ago
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=37165+btu%2Fhour+in+wa...
857.
by zbrozek 6y ago
It seems to work perfectly fine either way for me. Not sure what the complaint is?
858.
by zbrozek 6y ago
Wireless is the worst thing about my Sculpt. The crummy Fn row (coupled with the Fn-to-proprietary switch) is the second worst thing. I'd love to see a mk2 which fixes those issues. If a wired one were to exist, it would be pretty snaz
859.
by zbrozek 6y ago
I would love to own one. I mostly use a bicycle, but sometimes I buy groceries and I would prefer not to get wet on rainy days. Time to explore options.
860.
by zbrozek 6y ago
That's already exactly what tiered pricing is.
861.
by zbrozek 6y ago
There's another post that used a term I'm going to appropriate for other conversations: homo economicus. We aren't that species. We don't have perfect information. We don't have infinite capacity or attention span t
862.
by zbrozek 6y ago
Let's say you're a cloud operator placing long-lead just-in-time orders for hard drives with three different suppliers. Thailand floods and your carefully planned-in-advance delivery schedule is hosed. Your competitor with some in
863.
by zbrozek 6y ago
In practice it's vastly more cost efficient for me to build an enormous solar array and install batteries. So I'm doing that.
864.
by zbrozek 6y ago
That's probably true in places with sensible construction costs and timelines. But around here it's going to cost me $250k to fix the envelope of my house. If it reduced my energy usage to zero it would take only 70 years to pay f
865.
by zbrozek 6y ago
I think money is actually the problem. In a rich country everyone can afford to have opinions about other folks' business, and so we spend years approving projects that take months to complete. Japan has (as far as I can tell as a dist
866.
by zbrozek 6y ago
At eye-watering expense and with long lead times. Both of those are largely self-inflicted wounds. As with everything, if it were cheaper and faster to do, we'd probably be doing more of it. We'd do well to shorten timelines and c
867.
by zbrozek 6y ago
> Betwwwn 250,000 accidental deaths and billions of suffering people, I choose the former. Those were your words, so I'm asking you about the billions.
868.
by zbrozek 6y ago
But where are the billions suffering from nuclear power? As you point out, even with a generous accounting, Chernobyl was orders of magnitude less than that.
869.
by zbrozek 6y ago
Great! Now go tear down the entire housing stock so we can rebuild it better. Unfortunately, as a society we're already under-building, so we can't really afford to tear down what we've already got. In some places (like here
870.
by zbrozek 6y ago
https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHED... Most of my usage is in tier 2 at $0.31443/kWh. In practice the actual bill comes out to $0.44/kWh because of all the random other

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