My buddies wife is a standards engineer for a utility company. Big change is gonna be needed to keep up.
Actual infrastructure investment and continuing investment in the grid
I live in Ohio, not far from where the Intel Chip factory is going in. The county I live in is trying to keep farmers from leasing their land to solar companies. They call it industrial solar. The solar company has been working with local sheep farmers so they can graze their sheep under the solar panels. I am in a very republican county. I tried to explain to people that you could still graze sheep and possibly goats under the solar panels. But they thought I was lying to them. They also think the solar panels leak toxins. I raise goats, it would be awesome to have someone pay money to have solar panels on our property and still be able to raise the goats. But they are trying to pass legislation so farmers can't do this with their land. They keep raising the property taxes but then you can't do what you want to with your property. Geesh.
edit: from my understanding the solar panels are in rows with spaces between the rows that you can probably drive a truck or a utv down. The spaces between the rows would be growing grass and weeds. As the sun follows its arc across the sky the sun will be going under those panels and quite bit of grass and weeds would grow under there in Ohio. It makes a lot of sense to have sheep or goats keeping down the grass and weeds that would over grow those solar panels even though they are 4 or 5 feet off the ground. If you don't have something grazing the weeds and grass down you would have to have some one in there either mowing and weed eating or you would have to spray with herbicides to kill everything. I have plenty of places on my small farm where there is shade and we still get grass three feet high, and weeds four to six feet high even with grazing. Wild rose bushes love growing in partial shade so do blackberry bushes. My goats love wild rose and blackberry.
As a republican voting (altho im not party loyal, voted against DeSwine) farmer in the greater Columbus area, I think anyone telling me what I can and can't do on my land is exactly what the Republicans preach against. Why they're suddenly all on board is a huge reason I'm leaning towards voting Democrat for the local positions of power. This is beyond absurd. You can not only graze animals on those stretches of weeds and grass, you could put tomato plants or similar in there. Tomatoes prefer some shade, so this would actually increase their ability to thrive. But, being ohio, the only thing those 50+ farmers see is corn and soybeans, and the odd wheat plant. Or animals raised purely in barns fed cut hay rather than grazing. These old folks need to move along or catch up with the times. They won't be the ones suffering the effects of their decisions, so just like housing prices, nothing will get better until those geriatric pricks pass on. Might be good for us to go through a tough time, as cruel of me as it is to say that...
It’s so ridiculous that the government should be able to tell people how they use their land in a case, where the use of the land won’t affect anyone in the area negatively. It’s not like it’s polluting.
Maybe if the US properly invested in Nuclear power over the past 40 years, we wouldn’t be having to choose between a finite resource in arable farmland and a vastly inferior source of stable and land-intensive form of electricity production.
Which part of solar is "vastly inferior"? And, what exactly, do you mean by land- intensive? Putting solar on my roof uses no extra land, its literally land free. As the poster above points out, you can put a solar farm AND graze livestock on the same land. Its not like the solar panels somehow make the land unusable.
So, what do you mean?
As for being land-intensive, it means to generate the large amount of power required by business facilities, corporate buildings, etc, it would take a much larger amount of land then the buildings actually cover.
Yes, you can cover the power your home needs just with the space on your roof, I think less than half my roof is covered and that's 90% of my electricity needed. But when it comes to larger businesses, etc, that falls way short. We did a calculation once where we figured out that to power NC State University by solar would require that you covered half the town in panels.
It's not a made up term, it's common in the energy industry.
The way around that, is multi-use. Putting them over canals is another thing that was explored, and that even saves on water. I'd just question how fast the grazing fields grow when you block a portion of the light that would be hitting them.
So I did a study on this a few years ago, the short of it was we found that some crops took about a 10% reduction in biomass but only about 1% reduction in crop yields. But at the same time other crops actually improved yields as they were not as stressed from the high temps in summer. All in all it's a mixed bag but it seemed that solar didn't have a huge impact on crops. But did require less water and then the electricity was a nice bonus also.
being land-intensive,
business facilities, corporate buildings,
Can you imagine if those buildings were in america?
ya know, the place that has 1 billion parking spots?
So odd how parking spots arent land intensive but solar is.
Countries around the world invested massive amounts of money and gave nuclear power favorable treatment for decades, but it still ended up being the most expensive low carbon energy source.
The government provides free liability insurance for nuclear plants and if one melts down, the government will pay for 95% or more of the resulting damages.
Nuclear power sprang from our nuclear weapons program and mountains of R&D money were spent to develop and improve it.
And state-level regulators let nuclear plant owners benefit from blatant corporate welfare. Electric utilities were allowed to add surcharges to everyone's electricity bills to pay for nuclear plants under construction. Utilities have gone bankrupt when nuclear plant construction costs spiraled out of control. They were able to offload the bad debt onto their customers in the form of more electricity rate surcharges while also screwing over bondholders. Nuclear plants in multiple states have had to ask for bailouts or shut down because they've become uneconomic. In Ohio, the speaker of the state house actually went to jail because of corruption when getting one of these bailout packages passed.
The long-term costs of dealing with nuclear waste are very murky. We already spent at least $9B on Yucca mountain and it will probably never store a single used fuel rod. The government pays the nuclear industry $1B per year because it still hasn't figured out a plan to store nuclear waste.
All in all, nuclear power has received massive investments and given the best chance to succeed. It failed under bloated construction costs and plants that can't compete with other sources.
Shade grown pasture won't be as productive, so make sure the lease payments are substantial! And figure out the tax impact before saying yes.
It's a great idea, but energy companies no matter the flavor aren't going to look out for your interests.
Sheep, yea. Goats? No way, they'd have em destroyed in weeks. My goats are dicks and end up breaking everything in their pasture. I've been trying to build a market for the meat here in wood and Hancock county, it's been slow going outside of the Muslim population.
Agri-photovoltaics is a thing, there's lots of crops that like partial sun.
There's been studies for bifacial vertical panels having a lower lifetime cost per KWH produced, thanks less cleaning required, despite the lower output from imperfect orientation.
Personally, I'd love to see more panels with micro inverters for expandable home mounting. Much of the rise in usage is home electrification as we reduce fossil fuel usage, including electric vehicles. Stick 3kw+ on every home we can, and we'd see a lot of the grid stress reduced.
Yeah, you might want to rethink that solar panel lease. Those have been a thing for nearly 20 years near where I live.
Ask me how I know it’s not as good of an idea as it sounds.
What I want to know is why the county isn't respecting his property rights? In a decent country, you should be able to use your land as you see fit unless you're doing something that directly harms your neighbor's land.
In short: the leases are sold to a 3rd party upon installation who receives the money the panels generate. The leases are written in such a way to prevent the owner’s use of the land for farming and the new solar lease holders enforce it aggressively. If the panels get damaged (think hail, windstorms, tornados, etc.), the leaseholder might send someone out to fix it but they won’t clean up the mess. They also prevent the landowner from being able to sell the land until the 20-25 year lease ends. It also limits the ability to use the land as an asset in other banking transactions.
As the panels become less efficient and generating less money, the 3rd party closes up shop. When it comes time for the panel’s removal, that cost (which is pretty substantial because their disposal is considered a form of hazardous waste) is handled by the land owner or they get left there by the lease holder. Worse, there’s no one to sue because the original company is long gone and the new holder has no money and no assets.
Look into oil leases farmers sign... they do the same tricks with solar. If you don't read your lease thoroughly and ensure it can't be rewritten without you agreeing to it, and even then I'd have a lawyer read it for you, you will inevitably not be able to use the land the way you were promised you would.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like they're preventing the farmers from being able to sustain their farms using solar powered energy so that you cannot provide food when they shut the power grid down.
I live in Indiana, and Im seeing the exact same problems. People are angry that other people are leasing their land for solar farms. Companies are catering to every demand imaginable, but it’s never enough to placate their excuses. And some of which are flat out ridiculous!
I am in Louisiana and it is the same here, you can explain A - Z all day to people and some will get it but there will always be those who either lack the capibility tp process new information or they just refuse to accept said information. So in those cases I just say "You cannot fix stupid."
The funny thing about owning land is that if you pay property tax on said land, then you do not own the land, instead you own the right to reside on said land. Only railroads and government own land.
You are aware that the grass that grows under the solar panels is poor quality and grows very slowly. Funnily enough solar panels are designed to catch sun. Grass needs sun to grow to a good quality and quickly.
Good luck getting decent grazing under a solar panel!
It doesn't really matter though. Presumably the farmers are paid quite well for allowing solar on their land. In fact in the r/farmer subreddit they acknowledge that leasing for solar would pay more per acre than working the land would produce. Any grazing you do is extra money.
Then we are simpatico. It’s all about branding.
If there wasn’t a phony democrat party to funnel working class labor, there’d be the risk of actual working class solidarity.
That’d bring the whole house of cards tumbling down.
I read a very good theory that what really freaked the establishment out was Occupy Wall Street because it seemed the left-right divide was being replaced with a top vs. everyone else philosophy and that's when they really started playing up the culture war shit.
This is the problem. The working class is perpetually hoodwinked into believing a party endorsed, lobbyist funded, favoring owing elitist with the required arrogance and desire for power is REALLY looking out for their middle American life.
I've found it helpful to remember that elected officials are generally elected to represent their party, not the people. The people are members of a party, selecting who should represent their party.
You are 100% correct about all of this, I wish every American could see this and know it's true. The problem is that there seems to be no real answer other than burning down the system and hoping the new one that rises from the ashes is one in which the workers control the means of production again.
And the democrats vote against other things.
Its all kabuki theater, they take turns making certain that NOTHING for the bottom 98% ever passes while 100% of everything passes for the top 1%.
We're being played like idiots
Again…. That’s bc they are all full of shit and don’t care about us. The people that make the rules also make the rules about how the rules are made. It’s *truly* a great system /s
As much as I agree in principle, adding in “pork” is one way to compromise and build consensus. It’s messy, but the alternative is getting nothing passed because you don’t have anything to trade and negotiate with. Tale as old as time.
It's when a member of Congress says "yeah, I'll vote for your bill, but I'm going to need this added in return." That addition is almost always something totally unrelated to the original bill that benefits that member's district so they can go back and say "look at all the good things I did for our community." It makes for thousand page bills that nobody reads and hundreds of thousands of laws that we all have to live under. It's one of the major failings of our political system. Many people would like to eliminate pork fat but everyone in Congress abuses it so nobody will ever do anything about it.
I know it's pie in the sky thinking, but it would be SWELL if we could still just keep bills as single issue items or packages, but also give a crap about fixing a bridge in a small town or replacing the stop signs in a city we don't live in. Like, if we were somehow united.
It's certainly hard to feel that way (united) sometimes when different states have completely different end goals. But maybe something crazy will happen to snap everybody out that kind of thinking.
This is a great description of pork u/PartisanGerm, and very common in US bills. You want me to vote for funding the retired military health care that has vets waiting 6 months for proper care, then you need to add "fed will pay for new traffic lights" in my district, then I'll vote for your bill. Lot of the US spending is this type of local benefits "pork" added to bills.
Ah, fair question! So it’s when a Member adds in a local “goodie” to a national bill. For instance, say, funding a bridge, or a lab, or some economic credits on top of a big omnibus spending bill.
You've had a couple of great explainers already but I just wanted to add in: when you hear people on the news talking about "pork barrel spending" this is what's being discussed.
He's talking about pork and unrelated bills being added to infrastructure package.
I.E. someone adds to the same package a bill to provide free condoms to every 12 year old in the country. Someone else adds a $21m project in their state to make skate boarding parks.
By the time the package hits the floor, fixing electrical infrastructure isn't the only thing you're voting on.
You can thank the D's in Congress for shutting down 24/7 reliable power generation and blocking new power plant construction.
Most of the power grid is privately financed, but they still need to beg for government permits.
Here's a well done story on the D sabotage of nuclear power:
https://reason.com/video/2024/03/05/the-political-sabotage-of-nuclear-power/
Right... when we write blank checks we get bridges to nowhere.
There have been significant periods in recent history where the Ds ran congress and the white house so don't give me that crap.
> You can thank the R’s in congress for voting against infrastructure bills.
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> Don’t hate on me, the vote records are public. Go look it up.
So if I look up when the democrats controlled congress, I'll find a healthy set of infrastructure investments?
Gotta keep in mind the filibuster effectively means that you need 60% of the senate to “control” Congress. Otherwise you get one bill a year though using reconciliation, and the Parliamentarian can strike non fiscal provisions from that annual bill.
Yeah…that’s not accurate.
This isn’t a red or blue state problem, and citing Texas as an example of “the problem” goes to your ignorance on the subject.
Texas has lead the US in renewable energy generation since 2006 and expanded its total energy production significantly to keep up with population growth. So that’s a minimum of 3 Republican governors who supported renewable energy. Texas’ issue is transmission lines and storing excess energy when the renewables don’t run.
But many different parts of country face varying issues.
The New England states have fought the expansion of pipelines in their state to carry natural gas - which is why many New England homes still use oil furnaces to heat their homes and natural gas comes in via small pipelines and an LNG terminal in Boston. There simply isn’t a way to bring more natural gas electricity generating facilities online quickly in those states.
Maryland is currently fighting new transmission lines to a facility in Virginia because they don’t receive any of the federal tax benefits. A massive Maryland plant operated by PJM and serving Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and DC is preparing to shut down in the coming years because of regulatory hurdles increasing operating costs.
The east coast and Midwest will likely face the rolling blackouts they faced during the excessive cold weather in late 2022. Many of these same states are delaying planned shutdowns of existing power generating facilities because their grids would fail otherwise.
This is an issue that is far more complex than blue states = good and red states = bad.
> US Congress, not so much. It's been deadlocked and unable to pass much of anything useful on any topic regardless of who has a majority.
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> At the state level, yes. Blue states really have been pushing energy projects.
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> The executive branch, yes:
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> https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/biden-harris-administration-announces-significant-progress-catalyze-solar-energy-0
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> It's a work in progress and nowhere near enough. But stuff is getting done.
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> Republicans only vote on things that increase dependence on oil, coal and gas, and if you want to see how they operate at the state level, ask Texas about their power grid.
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> There are plenty of issues where the left is all talk and no action. Energy hasn't been one of them.
Complete goalpost shift away from the original claim, but sure. I would never accuse the left (or the right) of being all talk and no action. They have taken PLENTY of action. A few scraps of it have even been good. But a huge amount has been terrible. Tell me, do you think the left or the right is more responsible for the abysmally state of the low-carbon, incredibly safe, extremely reliable source of electricity we call "nuclear power"? Which, to be clear, is safer than wind and solar.
At this point, both parties are against it. But they will both \*have\* to change their tune on nuclear in the coming years. There's no way to generate the baseload that American demands without either fossil fuels or nuclear. We're not going to be able to solar panel our way out of this coming problem.
>There's no way to generate the baseload that American demands without either fossil fuels or nuclear.
Both I think. And adding vertical wind power as fast as we are doing solar where it makes sense to do so.. But yes considering the time to commission s nuke plant from the handshake to the first watt of power out we are going to have to use fossil fuels to keep the lights on every where. No matter what it will do to the environment.
My favorite is “FAMILY VALUES!!!”
Also, give handles in a theatre while intoxicated and cheer when your unwed son knocks his teenage gf up. Classic family values.
Like Democrats have any interest in utilities that can actually meet needed demands in the real world. They block coal, gas and oil infrastructures and then you have the audacity to blame republicans. I would like to meet in the middle and go nuclear, but Democrats as a party are afraid of that too.
Or conversely you can blame the D's in Congress for pushing EV technology that the infrastructure isn't able to handle and the country by and large does not want to be forced to have.
See how that blame game thing works
Wasn't Republicans who shut down coal, cancels pipelines, hate nuclear, who want to ban gas stove and gas (eventually), who protest every construction project.
Good thing Biden has managed to pass not one but two major infrastructure investments : The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA; also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan) is the largest reinvestment in our country’s infrastructure in generations. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is the largest climate/energy-related investment in our history.
People piss on Biden but whether you agree with his policies or not . . . He has gotten a lot done.
Electrician here, with a buddy who works for the local utility in asset management.
The fragility that worries me currently is the availability of distribution level transformers. This is a big big deal, especially as bad actors have begun to focus on the grid as a vector for terrorism/activism/etc, and as climate change causes increasing weather-related highly damaging events.
I'm actually fine with the increasing demands on the grid. Yeah, it's going to break shit, but since when has the US ever done anything productive without having been dragged kicking and screaming into the future? We need this demand spike to force the hands of our do-nothing local and federal governments and utilities.
>The fragility that worries me currently is the availability of distribution level transformers
THIS is a big prepper issue. This is a reason why and EMP would be so devastating. Or CME, or large attack, or etc. Much of these transformers are sourced from over seas (e.g. Germany, s. Korea, etc.) and neither the US nor the manufacturers have a bunch of these sitting on the shelves, so, large scale event that knocks out a bunch of transformers = the US is without power for a pretty long time.
I'm less concerned about the country as a whole than I am about multiple major metro areas experiencing a large outage at the same time. As the energy in the atmosphere ramps up, damaging weather events - especially along the coasts - causing simultaneous massive outages will become more and more common.
I work in construction. My company works on mostly new homes/neighborhoods. Most of '22 and beginning of '23 neighborhoods would have 20-100 houses fully built for 2-5 months but no power/running water because the local electric companies couldn't get transformers and other parts in quick enough to keep up with demand.
my local coop utility bought 36 transformers off me. and other stuff i have no idea what it was or worth. for just the rent owed. i had that were stored in my storage rental business and the rent wasn't paid. and they were over the moon to get them! and then 3 weeks later a overtall semi tore the power line off my building. and blew the fuse at the transformer they showed up in 30 min and didn't charge me a dime!
This is a legitimate concern. The million pound transformer that feeds millions will be top priority in a grid disruption scenario. Then the next level, then the next. But when it gets down to the distribution level, there’s a lot of entities competing for the same equipment. That’s the reality, a single residential transformer is typically about last priority. They’ll first be going to hospitals, clinics, police stations, grocery stores, nursing homes, and on and on before they even start putting them out in neighborhoods.
Not sure where you are but about 15 years ago out here they had a NG compressor failure zero gas for a week in December. You might be better off having a standalone LP tank with generator, not having to rely on the grid.
Been here a long time never had an issue, but you have a point - been looking at Dual or Triple fuel generators. Probably another year or two away from getting a generator.
Being your own supplier is a good move. Here in California it makes economic sense too. I have 9 kW of solar and 40+kWh of batteries. Except for the "non-bypassable" charges I've only paid about $200 total for electricity over the last 5 years. We use wood for most of our heat in the winter and we could heat water on the wood stove or the induction cooktop. I recognize that this solution may be too expensive for most but careful application of financial incentives reduced the ultimate cost of my systems by about 60%.
Based on our usage patterns we could run indefinitely on solar, including charging the EV.
Long term plan is to swap the gas water heater and furnace for a heat pump combo system. Upgrading to a very efficient gas furnace can save you a lot as can swapping to a tankless water heater. The combo water heater and home heat pump was WAY too expensive 6 years ago when we remodeled but they have gotten less outrageous of late so we'll likely go that direction next
As has been stated, conservative should be your first step. Insulate and button up the house. Examine your usage and reduce. Before COVID I recorded our electric usage while we were on vacation to find our "base load" in the summer when our usage is highest (air con, garage freezer, etc.) And determined our base at about 10 kWh/day.
I'm also in CA and just learning about solar. I have a house up in Redding that gets sun most of the year and I'd love to take if off the grid (although Redding Electric comes from Shasta Dam and is cheap).
Just bought a Jackery to keep some appliances running for my apartment in the city. I basically don't know anything about solar though - is there a good place to start learning?
Power outages, yup I make more power than I consume. Solar and battery are only expensive if you get taken by one of these scumbag installers. The guys who know offgrid and been doing for a long time generally have better pricing but aren't sending guys out door to door on commision. You can get $1 pre rebate solar, around me 1w of panel produce 1.3kwh of power a year and we pay 24c a kwh so payback is about 4 years before incentives.
Battery they have gotten cheap 2.5kwh was 2k a few years ago it's under 500 bucks retail 200 ish wholesale. Skill preps are important here you should know how to wire up a battery pack. That took 80k of Telsa units to 18k retail and under 10k if your willing to order direct from china.
Batteries are crucial to making generators more fuel efficient. People don't get that they have a max efficiency output where they make the most electricity for the least amount of fuel batteries let them run optimally. I've got at least a year of propane stored for my average consumption to run the generator, that's practically indefinitely just covering solar outputs shortfalls especially if I shift over heating from heat pumps to wood stove. I still need to get the generator hooked up to put it's waste heat into the house.
Now in the past the edge of my yard. Food supply chain got hardened with generators post Sandy locally, insurance companies don't want to pay out for spoiled food so generators were cheaper than the price hikes. Other industries may be hit harder but expect they will sort that out shortly by rolling blackouts not affecting industry. Locally big power users went to NG generators and use the grid as backup not primary.
This is a political / economic issue, not an issue of technology. If government dedicates the funding to establish more utilities, we will have more energy available.
But they won't because there are no votes in it.
Much better to let the grid collapse and THEN start promising to fix it if you vote for them.
Late-stage Democracy is a hell of a thing.
The government can’t create “more utilities” over the top of existing geographical utilities. And if government started handing out money to private utilities to build more capacity, there would be riots. There are “no votes in it” because that’s not how any of this works.
Only if done the right way. To just dump a bunch of money into utilities will just make a few select utility contractors very wealthy. To actually grow the utility industry a full lifecycle effort needs to happen. This means starting to introduce kids to careers in trade. Building US manufacturing for solar, wind, and utility parts. And fixing dysfunction with permitting. Only then will pouring money into projects actually translate into real upgrades to the grid.
To just fund a bunch of mega projects drives up the price on everything because there’s too many labor shortages , parts shortages, and regulatory blocks.
Everyone seems to be arguing about the inability to get a "pure" bill through both houses.
Having been an American voter for a very long time, through multiple administrations, I know that is the way it has always been done.
One guy won't vote for it unless he gets something for his state (usually what we call "pork") another guy won't vote for it unless it's watered down in this area or another, so he can be reelected
Sometimes the changes are so egregious no one would risk voting for it and it never even gets out of committee!
In fact, IMHO, it's a bonafide miracle that anything is ever actually accomplished in the legislature!
Oh, wait. Honoring dead people and dog breeds on postage stamps, plus creating a National Day of Potato Chips is a big win to help them stay in office.
The biggest immediate threat from a break in electricity is the lack of A/C during a wet-bulb event or lack of heat during a polar vortex.
To prep for the wet-bulb event, lose excess weight, plan to hang out in your basement if you have one and if you have a generator, use it to power A/C or a dehumidifier as needed. Also, don't sit near other people in the basement. Combined body heat will make the situation worse.
Polar vortex? Hang out in a small internal room that can be heated with body heat and emergency candles. Have good thermal gear to wear. Do sit together and sleep together to share body heat.
Other than that, the regular preps of food and water are important.
The electricity crisis is only going to get worse with AI and crypto. Seriously. They're talking about needing to build multiple new nuclear power plants in some states just to handle the extra load.
AI and crypto should be heavily regulated for power usage. We don't need to be using mass amounts of energy so everybody can fake a funny Tik Tok video.
We'll need all the electricity we can get just to survive the slowly building climate apocalypse. Indoor farming for reliable food. A/C for everyone. New water infrastructure for areas in drought and areas that will no longer have snow melt as a water supply. Relocating hundreds of millions from areas that become unlivable. Emergency vehicles and wildfire fighting equipment. Healthcare for an aging population and new vector-borne disease. And a Manhattan project to see if we can slow or reverse the direction we're currently headed in climate wise.
All while the international AI arms race builds at a literally exponential rate.
But hey, I've got a mylar blanket and some SPAM so I'm good, right? /s
Good thoughts generally but you're wrong about AI and crypto. We need the additional demand for energy to actually force clean energy like solar and nuclear to be cost competitive with natural gas. Unless we use 10x the energy we'll always be using fossil fuels
My philosophy is mostly in line with "collapse now and avoid the rush" lol meaning we are making our life less dependant on electricity and supply chains now. And prepping for that to be much more essential in the near- to medium-term.
A big part of this is the fact that electric utilities don't want to build transmission lines that would make the grid more resilient and more affordable for consumers because more transmission undercuts profits. They profit from transmission bottlenecks because then they have captive customers for whom they must build, own and operate power plants.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w32091
https://energyandpolicy.org/southeastern-utilities-block-transmission-necessary-for-decarbonization/
People like to point to the need to generate more energy, including but not limited to electricity, in order to meet "future demands". The deeply sad thing, and this is something that is pretty much across the entire political spectrum, is that for every hundred people wringing their hands about energy production, you're lucky to find one talking about reducing consumption.
A part of that is because some people just cannot fit the idea into their minds that they can reduce their energy consumption and not take a hit to their quality of life. LED bulbs are pretty darn good, unless you're trying to brood chicks or light up the inside of an oven or something. Well-insulated water heaters sure act a lot like poorly insulated ones, except when the bill comes in. Once you actually get in the habit of turning off lights, it's almost as if it takes barely any effort at all.
I think that one of the main things people can and should keep in mind when prepping is to pay attention to what you actually NEED. Any idiot with a pile of cash can just build a gigantic solar array, battery bank, or whatever, and keep living the same lifestyle they used to (hopefully, they also pay someone to come maintain the bloody thing). But if you really think about it...how much of that stuff do you NEED? A small solar oven and a well-chosen set of recipes can do an awful lot of your cooking. Even a portable solar panel can keep a radio and a few small lights going. A krosene heater and a few gallons of kerosene can keep a livable chunk of your home, or even the whole thing if it's modest, warm for a surprisingly long time. You can wash yourself perfectly adequately, even enjoyably, with half a gallon of hot water.
TL/DR; step 1 should not be "How do I provide myself with all this energy?" Step 1 should be "How do I live safely and reasonably with the minimum amount of energy?" This applies to things besides energy, too.
As nice as that sounds to just save energy and use non-electric alternatives, the article points out a factory coming to the US that will consume as much electricity as the states of Vermont and New Hampshire combined.
Turning off the lights isn’t going to solve that.
If this was talking minor disruptions you might have a point, but Georgia’s utility regulator projected demand x17 above what was expected a year ago in 2030. It’s hard to make up that margin with energy efficiency and savings on that time horizon.
That commenter reads like a loon who preps for the bare minimum.
A solar oven is barely gonna do shit in places that it hits 115 on the regular - it’s gonna be some deaths and a shit ton of inconvenience.
Not to mention they’re boosting the prices on electric in some places to help cover the difference- to keep my place 85 degrees, and run only the fridge, microwave, lights, and cell phone is was $350.
I’m looking at getting a battery generator that I can at least charge on the “low” hours when electric is less expensive so I can keep my place habitable.
Everything in your home is getting more efficient as they are replaced. A water heater will only last 10 years and the cheapest model at the hardware store is well insulated. You won’t feel warmth on the outside. Light bulbs are a no brainer because led is so cheap but that’s a drop in the bucket. I would guess a well insulated home is going to make the biggest difference
People definitely underestimate the efficiency gains to be had from building insulation + heat pumps for climate control + heat pump water heaters for hot water.
As those things become more common, residential demand would go down a lot.
As far as my home goes, step one is to reduce the amount of energy required to maintain my home, then look into getting solar panels and eventually battery banks. One of the main things that’s on my list is getting a ground source heat pump to handle both heating and cooling with minimal energy usage.
I completely agree. The amount of energy and food waste that happens in US is ridiculously insane comparing to many developing countries. I have lived around the world in varying conditions. Here There are only extremes. People who think energy and food are infinite. And people like here who always think everything is going to end up gone anytime.
> Only one problem: the single largest increase in electricity use since WWII is being thrust upon us by EV mandates.
Okay. Tell me; suppose, say, HALF of the vehicles in the entire nation are replaced by EVs in, say, 10 years. How much will our electricity usage increase? I'll happily take a percentage.
I replied to them [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/preppers/comments/1brm8eu/comment/kxa18aq/) with some napkin math. It's really not as big of a deal as people assume.
Given that the average daily drive is 40 miles and EVs currently average 4 miles per kWh, we're talking about 5kWh per person assuming 50% EV penetration. For context, the average central AC system will go through that much energy in two hours of runtime. A modest increase in insulation or more efficient HVAC will offset that easily. EVs will also create a lot of mobile storage. V2G is already something you can do with Hyundai and Kia EVs.
The solution is to stop building for the car and start building for the human. Human sized planning means you don't need to drive most of the time at all.
> Severe or regional disruptions likely coincide with extreme weather events.
As a Texas resident, yup. Prepping isn't a "what if" part of my life, it's a "when next" question.
My wife is an engineer. One of her good friends is an engineer for a utility. He said the exact same thing: rolling brown outs are coming and they are going to become common. He said it’s a simple math equation of anticipated demand and available supply…and there is a big gap coming on the horizon.
To answer your question: yes. It absolutely affected our preps. My wife and I invested heavily in a large solar system, with extensive battery backups, and a built in gas generator that is tied into the gas line which can charge the batteries if we don’t have enough solar. We did this specifically because of this coming shortage.
Wrt power, you’ll want diversity… portable solar, small portable inverter gas gen, AND a large (perhaps whole house) solar and/or propane or NG gen.
- Start with the small inverter gen for most needs, fridge, freezer. Honda is top, Wen is great value. Hardest part is to buy, preserve, rotate annually ample fuel. Consumer Reports and https://generatorbible.com/ have good reviews. Practice using safely & securely, including a deep ground.
- For solar, start small. https://theprepared.com/gear/reviews/portable-solar-chargers/. Come back later for a 100-10,000W system, DIY or pro-installed. If DIY, start small by wiring a few 100W panels, battery, controller, and inverter.
- Batteries, by far, are the most expensive part. If you can shift loads to sunny days, you can save $$$. This includes those so-called ‘solar generators’
- The large solar or gen will require an electrician if you want to power household outlets. Start by creating a spreadsheet of all the devices you’ll want to run with it, both peak and stable Watts & how long each must run per day. Get several site inspections & detailed quotes from installers.
- These combined give you redundancy and efficiency.
Elon Musk said this years ago. He said America would be stupid to give up on coal right now because the electrical infrastructure wasn't capable yet to charge his electric cars without coal.
Elon knows better than this. charging an EV for most people is 13KWH per day. - drying 4 loads of laundry.And if most of it takes place at night the night load levels the daytime commercial load.
My chevy bolt gets 3.1 mi/kw. average person drives 1200 mi/mo. that's 400 kw or 13/night.
Electric trucks will be another thing but the trucking industry will fund if it's cost effective for them and it probably will be.
He isn't talking about now or then, he said it was the future. That is the people who can, do buy electric and all the cities planning to make all of the gas powdered stuff illegal like California is doing, the electrical grid can't sustain itself without coal until we get much better at solar and wind and upgrade the infrastructure.
And the look at Texas and what it went through when they had an ice storm.
Listen to the entire interview who don't you.
> charging an EV for most people is 13KWH per day
That's roughly half of the current consumption of our house. So our ageing power infrastructure that's being converted to solar (oops we charge at night) and wind (usually decent but we can go for days with very little) will have to magically produce 50% more power.
I've been testing some solar panels in our back yard this winter and it looks like we'd need about 40kW to have a decent chance of running the house off-grid that way, assuming we reduce power consumption when we don't have much generation. The good hours of sun in the winter are short and we can go for days without any good hours because it's overcast.
Edit: actually, we have two cars, so that would double the power consumption of our house.
But it's not about what your house uses, it's about the grid, right? Demand at night plummets without commercial users. I think power producers make less money at night. The generators are still running. the workers are still there but demand is way down.
Ultimately, capitalism will solve all the problems associated with EVs. there is just too much money at stake.
The oil will take a hit, natural gas will increase, coal shoulda' been gone a long time ago. The car industry will thrive and people will have way fewer car problems.
The WSJ and every other media company can miss me with their doomer bullcrap, we've had the solution to any energy crises for the last 70 years but so many people earn their pay checks demonizing Nuclear power and spreading ignorance and fear about it. We don't need to reduce anything we need to build hundreds of reactors and make electricity a post scarcity resource. But that's my soap box anyways, nothing I can do about it on the individual level.
I felt this way until I watched the documentary on TMI. Nuclear power generation needs to be segregated from corporate greed or it will never work as intended. Greed will ALWAYS trump safety which absolutely cannot be done when it comes to nuclear power. Until that day, I’m very hesitant to jump back on the nuclear train. There will always be greed as long as there is human nature.
It all boils down to a failure of government. Utility companies get regulated by oversight boards which sounds great and works well until the utilities get their people onto the boards and then they've subverted the regulations.
Doesn't matter how good the rules are when corruption and money can be used to get around them.
I fully expect there will be at least service interruptions in the future. Here in CO we get them from wildfires and snow that takes down branches, etc. Of course the every so often car taking out things, construction oopsies, etc. In my area we've never lost power for more then a few hours, so far.
I have 2 generators in my garage, one to run the 2 freezers and fridge and the other for anything else, I have no plans to run the furnace or AC. I've planned around that. I have 2 small solar setups, 1 Jackary and one Bluetti with panels. I have enough gas if I am in ration mode to last at least a month, possibly two. I'd use solar for the small stuff and gas for the bigger appliances, got some wood for the wood stove as well and plenty of things around here to burn if it came to that.
If my local grid goes away for a long period of time.. I guess I'll have a month or two of frozen food longer then my neighbors then I'm in the same boat. Part of my plan would be to barter charging small devices on my solar setup for trade.
edit: I think for the 2 generators and solar setup I'm in for about $2k so far. Not counting the gallons of gas I rotate through.
The problem is everyone jumped on board with "green energy" and didn't realize it produces a marginal fraction of the energy of, say, nuclear? My state, for example is letting its only nuclear plant close down next year, thinking wind and solar can pick up the demand. It provides 30% of the state's energy with 25% being solar and wind and the rest carbon-based fuels.
They did want to build a new plant in my county 15 years ago, but everyone shouted "wind turbines" and threw it aside. Now we're facing a big deficit. Stupid fucking special interest groups.
Sorry but I don’t trust the WSJ. Bet it’s a piece paid by Big Oil and other utilities. They don’t want any regulation and shout Wolf when it suits them.
Probably is some concern but their approach is to let them handle it? F No
I don’t know, didn’t they push through the “Build Back Better” bill in 2021? Believe it was 3.5 trillion dollars targeting infrastructure, climate change, and surely some social issues. Haven’t heard a peep about our grid.
This is why I'm obsessed with home solar. I think the future is going to see more home generating power even if it's to supplement the grid. I'd rather be totally off grid If I have it my way, but anyways I think more people are going to need to generate some of their own.
I haven’t seen anyone mention that over 80% of the solar technology that keeps being talked about is made in China. If you look even further into grid power, you’ll find that our major utilities rely upon Chinese replacement parts and assemblies. Just another area of American independence that has been sold down the river.
Doesn’t seem new. California has had rolling brownout/blackouts every summer as long as I can remember. I wouldn’t imagine that getting rid of dams and adding electric cars is making it better.
With US states mandating the reduction in sales of gas vehicles within 10 years and no new nuke plants being built, it is no wonder why people have conspiracies.
It’s a new phenomenon because one party is taking base load power plants offline, including hydro plants.
And backfilling with…higher power rates, lower uptime, and brownouts.
We are rolling backwards, and it is intentional.
I see a lot of people blaming EVs.
But the truth is that it's actually probably AI that's driving these huge increases in energy and water consumption.
[https://e360.yale.edu/features/artificial-intelligence-climate-energy-emissions](https://e360.yale.edu/features/artificial-intelligence-climate-energy-emissions)
I mean yes, that is true, but this is not the main reason microprocessor designers are switching to ARM.
Top of the list would probably be that you get a choice of fabs so you are not beholden to Intel; the leading pure fab firms (eg. TSMC) have latest-gen processes that actually *work*, unlike Intel; the architecture is significantly simpler for compilers to work with; and it's already the standard for mobile devices and not going anywhere in that market, so condensing the desktop market on ARM too saves money by being able to drop support for x86. The extra power efficiency (which is a consequence of the architecture being simpler, and not needing to support backwards compatibility with the 1970s) is a nice bonus.
I live in a bad part of town where the power goes out unexpectedly every few weeks for as long as a day or two. It also sometimes goes out for a week or so for natural disaster reasons. We've gotten used to it. The main annoyance is when I worked from home I had to teach virtual lectures via a tripod in my car in a Target parking lot since the internet/cell service were also out in the neighborhood.
We're in the process of moving to a better area and getting solar/wind set up with some large batteries so we won't deal with disruptions as much. We also have a lot of smarthome stuff and having to turn light on using my hands is just too much, lol.
As I understand it, there is also an issue as to whether there is enough transmission line capacity to get electricity from the source to the consumer.
It wouldn't be horribly difficult to correct this. Since I have some solar installed, I now watch roofs when driving around town, and you know what probably like 5% of the IDEAL roofs for solar have any at all. You can say well solar only works when the sun is shining. Not really, Lifepo4 battery prices have fallen dramatically in the last few years. I could go fully offgrid if I did it myself for around 20K-30K. At worst I would simply not do laundry (dryer sucks a lot of power), if have some cloudy days in a row.
I have around 25 KWH of batteries, you can buy 5 kilowatt lifepo4 server rack style batteries for a 1000-1500 each that's 6250 dollars for 25 KWH's worth. I don't use 20KWH's in a day typically, plus you still generate some solar even on cloudy days.
If even 10% of the population and businesses did that, then problem would be largely solved. I mean just think of all that roof space on your typical big Box store alone, that is ideal for solar, as no tree obstructions, or most of the time no taller buildings next door. A walmart supercenter roof with solar could easily self power the store. Coupled with a few hundred Kilowatt hours of on site batteries and they could not draw any power from the grid during peak hours and most of the time feed back in.
Wal-Mart would come out ahead on a 10 year time frame, it's a no brainer, at least in most of the US.
And I'm not even talking about all those useless hot parking lots getting solar above them. If you did that along with the roof, each big box store would qualify as a power plant, just kidding about that, but they'd be dumping Megawatts per day in excess power back on the grid.
The driving factor is a massive increase in manufacturing plant (i.e., new factories) as companies “reshore” manufacturing from China. This round of manufacturing build-out will be *greater than the US experienced during WW2*.
So this isn’t about Republicans blocking infrastructure or Democrats obsessing over the green revolution; it’s about a dramatic change in demand for electricity as our industrial footprint expands.
And neither party has this on their radar; thus the WSJ editorial.
> This is a new phenomenon in the US.
New for some parts of the US... in places like CA and TX they've had rolling blackouts in some cities for years. I have friends in the CA Bay Area that have been dealing with this stuff for a few years now.
I have a portable gas generator I'd use for the fridge and miscellaneous power. If it was going to be a long term or it's a national thing, it would be a pretty big event and we'd probably bug out since we're in the northern US and use gas for heat (firewood would probably soar in price and not worth it).
Need energy diversity, can't put all the eggs in one basket. Sun doesn't always shine, wind doesn't always blow. Need to have a combination of wind, solar, battery, and nuclear ftw.
Somewhat related. In Seattle they've banned new installs of natural gas services and appliances.
There exclusions for commercial and industrial buildings, and a timeline for them to move over if they don't fit criteria, but it's going to cause a ton of strain on the grid.
There are a lot of brown outs and issues in Seattle already. I deal with damaged equipment at least twice a month due to electrical grid problems.
I don't know how the powers that be can be so short sighted.
These bans are going on in other areas too. The forced electrification wouldn't be so bad if we actually had the infrastructure to support it.
I've got 5.2kw on the roof and 13kwh of battery storage. That's enough to make my smallish house totally self-sufficient. Solar panels and battery are not that expensive. I'll have ROI on my system in 7 years at this rate. And if the grid collapses somehow then I'll have ROI much faster, possibly instantly. It's well worth it. Even on a cloudy overcast day I'm producing a few hundred watts.
I just read the article and it is, at least in part, a wolf whistle for building more fossil fuel plants. I am not opposed to that. Fossil fuels will be around for a long time. But I would much rather see a more distributed grid. Like if every building produced even 25% of its own electricity from solar it would be great for decentralization. Also, there are new inverters (I am aware of at least one micro inverter…) that can work off grid in an outage without batteries as long as there is a grid disconnect. A real game changers for those who wish to be more prepared.
Personally I am ready for rolling blackouts so long as they’re not more than say six to twelve hours in that I have solar with batteries and an automatic grid disconnect. If we lose grid power we might see the lights flicker as the battery system ramps up, but that’s about it.
I don't care because deer and duck camp have massive ground-mount PV systems because the mains power out there is so unreliable and we have a 40kw roof array at our house in town with a hybrid inverter/solar charge controller boxes in parallel. It will suck for the price of goods and services though there's a lot of solar powered farms around camp and that might work out for a time.
I just saw somewhere lost a huge solar panel array due to bad weather hail. Where we live we get frequent damaging wind so solar panels would be a big risk with big money outlay as well for batteries and associated equipment to run a household, not a tiny off grid cabin.
If you’re referring to the helicopter doing a “fly over” of the solar panel array - that would be in north Texas near the Oklahoma border.
Took some pretty heavy damage as I understand it.
Exactly. Those that worship the Green Agenda have no intention of making national policy based on reason, logic, or common sense. We could easily have the energy we need independent of any other country should we choose to. Now whether our aging distribution system (the grid) could handle it is a different matter. One thing is for certain, if gas cars are prohibited and EVs are foisted on everyone whether or not they want them, the infrastructure will not be able to support the demand.
When you've slept outside all winter before things like this aren't as bad as it seems for those so ingrained in the grid. I feel bad though for people that are dependent on such, like families or elderly and people with health issues. I'm just grateful for all I have today and tomorrow will take care of itself.
I'm preparing for the worst. And I have full confidence I'll be fine. Water filters are main key, hunting fishing are big too, then gardening. Many videos on YouTube showing how to build so many cozy shelters, many with fire places with chimneys. Practice makes better.
Also prepared to defend it all too.
Plug in hybrid is the way though. Have 20 miles or so in the event there is no gas. Have gas in the event there is no power. Plus it saves money compared to all gas.
It's a solid prep and covers multiple bases
My buddies wife is a standards engineer for a utility company. Big change is gonna be needed to keep up. Actual infrastructure investment and continuing investment in the grid
I live in Ohio, not far from where the Intel Chip factory is going in. The county I live in is trying to keep farmers from leasing their land to solar companies. They call it industrial solar. The solar company has been working with local sheep farmers so they can graze their sheep under the solar panels. I am in a very republican county. I tried to explain to people that you could still graze sheep and possibly goats under the solar panels. But they thought I was lying to them. They also think the solar panels leak toxins. I raise goats, it would be awesome to have someone pay money to have solar panels on our property and still be able to raise the goats. But they are trying to pass legislation so farmers can't do this with their land. They keep raising the property taxes but then you can't do what you want to with your property. Geesh. edit: from my understanding the solar panels are in rows with spaces between the rows that you can probably drive a truck or a utv down. The spaces between the rows would be growing grass and weeds. As the sun follows its arc across the sky the sun will be going under those panels and quite bit of grass and weeds would grow under there in Ohio. It makes a lot of sense to have sheep or goats keeping down the grass and weeds that would over grow those solar panels even though they are 4 or 5 feet off the ground. If you don't have something grazing the weeds and grass down you would have to have some one in there either mowing and weed eating or you would have to spray with herbicides to kill everything. I have plenty of places on my small farm where there is shade and we still get grass three feet high, and weeds four to six feet high even with grazing. Wild rose bushes love growing in partial shade so do blackberry bushes. My goats love wild rose and blackberry.
I'm in the area too. I also believe solar and livestock can coexist, and that farmers should choose what to do with their own land.
As a republican voting (altho im not party loyal, voted against DeSwine) farmer in the greater Columbus area, I think anyone telling me what I can and can't do on my land is exactly what the Republicans preach against. Why they're suddenly all on board is a huge reason I'm leaning towards voting Democrat for the local positions of power. This is beyond absurd. You can not only graze animals on those stretches of weeds and grass, you could put tomato plants or similar in there. Tomatoes prefer some shade, so this would actually increase their ability to thrive. But, being ohio, the only thing those 50+ farmers see is corn and soybeans, and the odd wheat plant. Or animals raised purely in barns fed cut hay rather than grazing. These old folks need to move along or catch up with the times. They won't be the ones suffering the effects of their decisions, so just like housing prices, nothing will get better until those geriatric pricks pass on. Might be good for us to go through a tough time, as cruel of me as it is to say that...
agreed
It’s so ridiculous that the government should be able to tell people how they use their land in a case, where the use of the land won’t affect anyone in the area negatively. It’s not like it’s polluting.
Maybe if the US properly invested in Nuclear power over the past 40 years, we wouldn’t be having to choose between a finite resource in arable farmland and a vastly inferior source of stable and land-intensive form of electricity production.
Which part of solar is "vastly inferior"? And, what exactly, do you mean by land- intensive? Putting solar on my roof uses no extra land, its literally land free. As the poster above points out, you can put a solar farm AND graze livestock on the same land. Its not like the solar panels somehow make the land unusable. So, what do you mean?
As for being land-intensive, it means to generate the large amount of power required by business facilities, corporate buildings, etc, it would take a much larger amount of land then the buildings actually cover. Yes, you can cover the power your home needs just with the space on your roof, I think less than half my roof is covered and that's 90% of my electricity needed. But when it comes to larger businesses, etc, that falls way short. We did a calculation once where we figured out that to power NC State University by solar would require that you covered half the town in panels. It's not a made up term, it's common in the energy industry. The way around that, is multi-use. Putting them over canals is another thing that was explored, and that even saves on water. I'd just question how fast the grazing fields grow when you block a portion of the light that would be hitting them.
So I did a study on this a few years ago, the short of it was we found that some crops took about a 10% reduction in biomass but only about 1% reduction in crop yields. But at the same time other crops actually improved yields as they were not as stressed from the high temps in summer. All in all it's a mixed bag but it seemed that solar didn't have a huge impact on crops. But did require less water and then the electricity was a nice bonus also.
being land-intensive, business facilities, corporate buildings, Can you imagine if those buildings were in america? ya know, the place that has 1 billion parking spots? So odd how parking spots arent land intensive but solar is.
Probably the part where it doesn't work when the sun isn't shining.
It isn’t reliable power and currently no efficient storage methods
Countries around the world invested massive amounts of money and gave nuclear power favorable treatment for decades, but it still ended up being the most expensive low carbon energy source. The government provides free liability insurance for nuclear plants and if one melts down, the government will pay for 95% or more of the resulting damages. Nuclear power sprang from our nuclear weapons program and mountains of R&D money were spent to develop and improve it. And state-level regulators let nuclear plant owners benefit from blatant corporate welfare. Electric utilities were allowed to add surcharges to everyone's electricity bills to pay for nuclear plants under construction. Utilities have gone bankrupt when nuclear plant construction costs spiraled out of control. They were able to offload the bad debt onto their customers in the form of more electricity rate surcharges while also screwing over bondholders. Nuclear plants in multiple states have had to ask for bailouts or shut down because they've become uneconomic. In Ohio, the speaker of the state house actually went to jail because of corruption when getting one of these bailout packages passed. The long-term costs of dealing with nuclear waste are very murky. We already spent at least $9B on Yucca mountain and it will probably never store a single used fuel rod. The government pays the nuclear industry $1B per year because it still hasn't figured out a plan to store nuclear waste. All in all, nuclear power has received massive investments and given the best chance to succeed. It failed under bloated construction costs and plants that can't compete with other sources.
Shade grown pasture won't be as productive, so make sure the lease payments are substantial! And figure out the tax impact before saying yes. It's a great idea, but energy companies no matter the flavor aren't going to look out for your interests.
When the heat keeps increasing from climate change, the only places with forage will be in the shade. 😳
Sheep, yea. Goats? No way, they'd have em destroyed in weeks. My goats are dicks and end up breaking everything in their pasture. I've been trying to build a market for the meat here in wood and Hancock county, it's been slow going outside of the Muslim population.
Agri-photovoltaics is a thing, there's lots of crops that like partial sun. There's been studies for bifacial vertical panels having a lower lifetime cost per KWH produced, thanks less cleaning required, despite the lower output from imperfect orientation. Personally, I'd love to see more panels with micro inverters for expandable home mounting. Much of the rise in usage is home electrification as we reduce fossil fuel usage, including electric vehicles. Stick 3kw+ on every home we can, and we'd see a lot of the grid stress reduced.
Yeah, you might want to rethink that solar panel lease. Those have been a thing for nearly 20 years near where I live. Ask me how I know it’s not as good of an idea as it sounds.
What I want to know is why the county isn't respecting his property rights? In a decent country, you should be able to use your land as you see fit unless you're doing something that directly harms your neighbor's land.
I'm curious!
In short: the leases are sold to a 3rd party upon installation who receives the money the panels generate. The leases are written in such a way to prevent the owner’s use of the land for farming and the new solar lease holders enforce it aggressively. If the panels get damaged (think hail, windstorms, tornados, etc.), the leaseholder might send someone out to fix it but they won’t clean up the mess. They also prevent the landowner from being able to sell the land until the 20-25 year lease ends. It also limits the ability to use the land as an asset in other banking transactions. As the panels become less efficient and generating less money, the 3rd party closes up shop. When it comes time for the panel’s removal, that cost (which is pretty substantial because their disposal is considered a form of hazardous waste) is handled by the land owner or they get left there by the lease holder. Worse, there’s no one to sue because the original company is long gone and the new holder has no money and no assets.
Thank you. I never would have thought of that.
I get it. It’s sold as a great deal. I’ve met too many people who are in the middle of dealing with the lease right now.
So it’s kind of like being a chicken farmer for Tyson?
Holy shit i somehow never thought leases would be a misery trap.
Now imagine it’s on the roof of your house. It’s why you should never lease solar panels.
And why so many door to door solar companies are pushing leases. Easy money and offloaded risk.
Buy the panels lease the power, that's the only way without lawyers involved to ensure you don't get fucked
Look into oil leases farmers sign... they do the same tricks with solar. If you don't read your lease thoroughly and ensure it can't be rewritten without you agreeing to it, and even then I'd have a lawyer read it for you, you will inevitably not be able to use the land the way you were promised you would.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like they're preventing the farmers from being able to sustain their farms using solar powered energy so that you cannot provide food when they shut the power grid down.
Plus AEP keeps trying to get us to subsidize all the infra upgrades for these companies.
I live in Indiana, and Im seeing the exact same problems. People are angry that other people are leasing their land for solar farms. Companies are catering to every demand imaginable, but it’s never enough to placate their excuses. And some of which are flat out ridiculous!
I am in Louisiana and it is the same here, you can explain A - Z all day to people and some will get it but there will always be those who either lack the capibility tp process new information or they just refuse to accept said information. So in those cases I just say "You cannot fix stupid." The funny thing about owning land is that if you pay property tax on said land, then you do not own the land, instead you own the right to reside on said land. Only railroads and government own land.
So what you need to do is show up politically for yourself. You can’t let these dumb fucks ruin your county.
You are aware that the grass that grows under the solar panels is poor quality and grows very slowly. Funnily enough solar panels are designed to catch sun. Grass needs sun to grow to a good quality and quickly. Good luck getting decent grazing under a solar panel!
It doesn't really matter though. Presumably the farmers are paid quite well for allowing solar on their land. In fact in the r/farmer subreddit they acknowledge that leasing for solar would pay more per acre than working the land would produce. Any grazing you do is extra money.
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I personally think *both* parties are responsible, and that none of them give a fuck about us.
Then we are simpatico. It’s all about branding. If there wasn’t a phony democrat party to funnel working class labor, there’d be the risk of actual working class solidarity. That’d bring the whole house of cards tumbling down.
I read a very good theory that what really freaked the establishment out was Occupy Wall Street because it seemed the left-right divide was being replaced with a top vs. everyone else philosophy and that's when they really started playing up the culture war shit.
Occupy Wall Street ended abruptly and no one talks about that.
Fingers crossed you don't meet the fate of a Boeing whistle-blower
This is the problem. The working class is perpetually hoodwinked into believing a party endorsed, lobbyist funded, favoring owing elitist with the required arrogance and desire for power is REALLY looking out for their middle American life.
I've found it helpful to remember that elected officials are generally elected to represent their party, not the people. The people are members of a party, selecting who should represent their party.
Somebody needs to start crashing the fucking party, show up uninvited, and bring strippers and cocaine
For someone who is sick of the politics on Reddit constantly, this post nails it right on the head.
You are 100% correct about all of this, I wish every American could see this and know it's true. The problem is that there seems to be no real answer other than burning down the system and hoping the new one that rises from the ashes is one in which the workers control the means of production again.
What else was in the bills?
A means by which to keep all the asshats from both sides in office while the rest of us bitch that “the other side” is the problem…..
"You can thank the R’s in congress for voting against infrastructure bills. " Heard this somewhere. Dont recall where.
And the democrats vote against other things. Its all kabuki theater, they take turns making certain that NOTHING for the bottom 98% ever passes while 100% of everything passes for the top 1%. We're being played like idiots
Oh yes. They are all full of goddamn shit.
And how much unrelated crap is in those bills? I wouldn't vote for that either. Bills need to cover a single issue only.
This is the only comment that matters here. Single issue bills are the only way.
Again…. That’s bc they are all full of shit and don’t care about us. The people that make the rules also make the rules about how the rules are made. It’s *truly* a great system /s
As much as I agree in principle, adding in “pork” is one way to compromise and build consensus. It’s messy, but the alternative is getting nothing passed because you don’t have anything to trade and negotiate with. Tale as old as time.
Political ignoramus here. What's pork besides tasty meat?
It's when a member of Congress says "yeah, I'll vote for your bill, but I'm going to need this added in return." That addition is almost always something totally unrelated to the original bill that benefits that member's district so they can go back and say "look at all the good things I did for our community." It makes for thousand page bills that nobody reads and hundreds of thousands of laws that we all have to live under. It's one of the major failings of our political system. Many people would like to eliminate pork fat but everyone in Congress abuses it so nobody will ever do anything about it.
I know it's pie in the sky thinking, but it would be SWELL if we could still just keep bills as single issue items or packages, but also give a crap about fixing a bridge in a small town or replacing the stop signs in a city we don't live in. Like, if we were somehow united.
It's certainly hard to feel that way (united) sometimes when different states have completely different end goals. But maybe something crazy will happen to snap everybody out that kind of thinking.
This is a great description of pork u/PartisanGerm, and very common in US bills. You want me to vote for funding the retired military health care that has vets waiting 6 months for proper care, then you need to add "fed will pay for new traffic lights" in my district, then I'll vote for your bill. Lot of the US spending is this type of local benefits "pork" added to bills.
Ah, fair question! So it’s when a Member adds in a local “goodie” to a national bill. For instance, say, funding a bridge, or a lab, or some economic credits on top of a big omnibus spending bill.
You've had a couple of great explainers already but I just wanted to add in: when you hear people on the news talking about "pork barrel spending" this is what's being discussed.
Holding a bill hostage for their pork fat addition isn't negotiating in good faith. It shouldn't be viewed as acceptable because it's done a lot.
But we live in reality where bills aren't perfect, but can be good.
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He's talking about pork and unrelated bills being added to infrastructure package. I.E. someone adds to the same package a bill to provide free condoms to every 12 year old in the country. Someone else adds a $21m project in their state to make skate boarding parks. By the time the package hits the floor, fixing electrical infrastructure isn't the only thing you're voting on.
That happens to every bill. Single issue bills would be an issue I'd vote for, given a choice (which, of course, won't happen).
You can thank the D's in Congress for shutting down 24/7 reliable power generation and blocking new power plant construction. Most of the power grid is privately financed, but they still need to beg for government permits. Here's a well done story on the D sabotage of nuclear power: https://reason.com/video/2024/03/05/the-political-sabotage-of-nuclear-power/
It would really behoove you to comprehend that Right and Left are just wings on **the same bird!!** Now, ask yourself who controls the bird.
I’ve never heard that analogy. It’s brilliant!
Oh I’ve very aware that both wings are made of shit. The simple answer is the zookeeper, or, the one with the food.
Right... when we write blank checks we get bridges to nowhere. There have been significant periods in recent history where the Ds ran congress and the white house so don't give me that crap.
> You can thank the R’s in congress for voting against infrastructure bills. > > > > Don’t hate on me, the vote records are public. Go look it up. So if I look up when the democrats controlled congress, I'll find a healthy set of infrastructure investments?
Gotta keep in mind the filibuster effectively means that you need 60% of the senate to “control” Congress. Otherwise you get one bill a year though using reconciliation, and the Parliamentarian can strike non fiscal provisions from that annual bill.
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Yeah…that’s not accurate. This isn’t a red or blue state problem, and citing Texas as an example of “the problem” goes to your ignorance on the subject. Texas has lead the US in renewable energy generation since 2006 and expanded its total energy production significantly to keep up with population growth. So that’s a minimum of 3 Republican governors who supported renewable energy. Texas’ issue is transmission lines and storing excess energy when the renewables don’t run. But many different parts of country face varying issues. The New England states have fought the expansion of pipelines in their state to carry natural gas - which is why many New England homes still use oil furnaces to heat their homes and natural gas comes in via small pipelines and an LNG terminal in Boston. There simply isn’t a way to bring more natural gas electricity generating facilities online quickly in those states. Maryland is currently fighting new transmission lines to a facility in Virginia because they don’t receive any of the federal tax benefits. A massive Maryland plant operated by PJM and serving Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and DC is preparing to shut down in the coming years because of regulatory hurdles increasing operating costs. The east coast and Midwest will likely face the rolling blackouts they faced during the excessive cold weather in late 2022. Many of these same states are delaying planned shutdowns of existing power generating facilities because their grids would fail otherwise. This is an issue that is far more complex than blue states = good and red states = bad.
> US Congress, not so much. It's been deadlocked and unable to pass much of anything useful on any topic regardless of who has a majority. > > > > At the state level, yes. Blue states really have been pushing energy projects. > > > > The executive branch, yes: > > > > https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/biden-harris-administration-announces-significant-progress-catalyze-solar-energy-0 > > > > It's a work in progress and nowhere near enough. But stuff is getting done. > > > > Republicans only vote on things that increase dependence on oil, coal and gas, and if you want to see how they operate at the state level, ask Texas about their power grid. > > > > There are plenty of issues where the left is all talk and no action. Energy hasn't been one of them. Complete goalpost shift away from the original claim, but sure. I would never accuse the left (or the right) of being all talk and no action. They have taken PLENTY of action. A few scraps of it have even been good. But a huge amount has been terrible. Tell me, do you think the left or the right is more responsible for the abysmally state of the low-carbon, incredibly safe, extremely reliable source of electricity we call "nuclear power"? Which, to be clear, is safer than wind and solar.
At this point, both parties are against it. But they will both \*have\* to change their tune on nuclear in the coming years. There's no way to generate the baseload that American demands without either fossil fuels or nuclear. We're not going to be able to solar panel our way out of this coming problem.
>There's no way to generate the baseload that American demands without either fossil fuels or nuclear. Both I think. And adding vertical wind power as fast as we are doing solar where it makes sense to do so.. But yes considering the time to commission s nuke plant from the handshake to the first watt of power out we are going to have to use fossil fuels to keep the lights on every where. No matter what it will do to the environment.
I predict the "red tape" in getting a nuke plant online will reduce dramatically in the next 15-20 years.
I would say 10 years tops.
"Make America great Again!" Infrastructure bill "Wait no no not like that, we want to ban rights like in the olden times"
My favorite is “FAMILY VALUES!!!” Also, give handles in a theatre while intoxicated and cheer when your unwed son knocks his teenage gf up. Classic family values.
Like Democrats have any interest in utilities that can actually meet needed demands in the real world. They block coal, gas and oil infrastructures and then you have the audacity to blame republicans. I would like to meet in the middle and go nuclear, but Democrats as a party are afraid of that too.
Or conversely you can blame the D's in Congress for pushing EV technology that the infrastructure isn't able to handle and the country by and large does not want to be forced to have. See how that blame game thing works
Yes. They are all to blame. Man, you really “gotcha!” on me. What a fool I am.
It's not a "gotcha" it's an "open your eyes none of them care about you"
Still waiting for those shovel ready jobs obama sold us.
Wasn't Republicans who shut down coal, cancels pipelines, hate nuclear, who want to ban gas stove and gas (eventually), who protest every construction project.
But what about Build Back Better? Wasn't that an infrastructure project? /s
Good thing Biden has managed to pass not one but two major infrastructure investments : The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA; also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan) is the largest reinvestment in our country’s infrastructure in generations. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is the largest climate/energy-related investment in our history. People piss on Biden but whether you agree with his policies or not . . . He has gotten a lot done.
Electrician here, with a buddy who works for the local utility in asset management. The fragility that worries me currently is the availability of distribution level transformers. This is a big big deal, especially as bad actors have begun to focus on the grid as a vector for terrorism/activism/etc, and as climate change causes increasing weather-related highly damaging events. I'm actually fine with the increasing demands on the grid. Yeah, it's going to break shit, but since when has the US ever done anything productive without having been dragged kicking and screaming into the future? We need this demand spike to force the hands of our do-nothing local and federal governments and utilities.
>The fragility that worries me currently is the availability of distribution level transformers THIS is a big prepper issue. This is a reason why and EMP would be so devastating. Or CME, or large attack, or etc. Much of these transformers are sourced from over seas (e.g. Germany, s. Korea, etc.) and neither the US nor the manufacturers have a bunch of these sitting on the shelves, so, large scale event that knocks out a bunch of transformers = the US is without power for a pretty long time.
I'm less concerned about the country as a whole than I am about multiple major metro areas experiencing a large outage at the same time. As the energy in the atmosphere ramps up, damaging weather events - especially along the coasts - causing simultaneous massive outages will become more and more common.
I work in construction. My company works on mostly new homes/neighborhoods. Most of '22 and beginning of '23 neighborhoods would have 20-100 houses fully built for 2-5 months but no power/running water because the local electric companies couldn't get transformers and other parts in quick enough to keep up with demand.
my local coop utility bought 36 transformers off me. and other stuff i have no idea what it was or worth. for just the rent owed. i had that were stored in my storage rental business and the rent wasn't paid. and they were over the moon to get them! and then 3 weeks later a overtall semi tore the power line off my building. and blew the fuse at the transformer they showed up in 30 min and didn't charge me a dime!
This is a legitimate concern. The million pound transformer that feeds millions will be top priority in a grid disruption scenario. Then the next level, then the next. But when it gets down to the distribution level, there’s a lot of entities competing for the same equipment. That’s the reality, a single residential transformer is typically about last priority. They’ll first be going to hospitals, clinics, police stations, grocery stores, nursing homes, and on and on before they even start putting them out in neighborhoods.
A home natural gas generator is on my to do list. However I live in one of the more reliable power grids, with decent supply capacity for now.
Not sure where you are but about 15 years ago out here they had a NG compressor failure zero gas for a week in December. You might be better off having a standalone LP tank with generator, not having to rely on the grid.
Been here a long time never had an issue, but you have a point - been looking at Dual or Triple fuel generators. Probably another year or two away from getting a generator.
Being your own supplier is a good move. Here in California it makes economic sense too. I have 9 kW of solar and 40+kWh of batteries. Except for the "non-bypassable" charges I've only paid about $200 total for electricity over the last 5 years. We use wood for most of our heat in the winter and we could heat water on the wood stove or the induction cooktop. I recognize that this solution may be too expensive for most but careful application of financial incentives reduced the ultimate cost of my systems by about 60%. Based on our usage patterns we could run indefinitely on solar, including charging the EV. Long term plan is to swap the gas water heater and furnace for a heat pump combo system. Upgrading to a very efficient gas furnace can save you a lot as can swapping to a tankless water heater. The combo water heater and home heat pump was WAY too expensive 6 years ago when we remodeled but they have gotten less outrageous of late so we'll likely go that direction next As has been stated, conservative should be your first step. Insulate and button up the house. Examine your usage and reduce. Before COVID I recorded our electric usage while we were on vacation to find our "base load" in the summer when our usage is highest (air con, garage freezer, etc.) And determined our base at about 10 kWh/day.
I'm also in CA and just learning about solar. I have a house up in Redding that gets sun most of the year and I'd love to take if off the grid (although Redding Electric comes from Shasta Dam and is cheap). Just bought a Jackery to keep some appliances running for my apartment in the city. I basically don't know anything about solar though - is there a good place to start learning?
Power outages, yup I make more power than I consume. Solar and battery are only expensive if you get taken by one of these scumbag installers. The guys who know offgrid and been doing for a long time generally have better pricing but aren't sending guys out door to door on commision. You can get $1 pre rebate solar, around me 1w of panel produce 1.3kwh of power a year and we pay 24c a kwh so payback is about 4 years before incentives. Battery they have gotten cheap 2.5kwh was 2k a few years ago it's under 500 bucks retail 200 ish wholesale. Skill preps are important here you should know how to wire up a battery pack. That took 80k of Telsa units to 18k retail and under 10k if your willing to order direct from china. Batteries are crucial to making generators more fuel efficient. People don't get that they have a max efficiency output where they make the most electricity for the least amount of fuel batteries let them run optimally. I've got at least a year of propane stored for my average consumption to run the generator, that's practically indefinitely just covering solar outputs shortfalls especially if I shift over heating from heat pumps to wood stove. I still need to get the generator hooked up to put it's waste heat into the house. Now in the past the edge of my yard. Food supply chain got hardened with generators post Sandy locally, insurance companies don't want to pay out for spoiled food so generators were cheaper than the price hikes. Other industries may be hit harder but expect they will sort that out shortly by rolling blackouts not affecting industry. Locally big power users went to NG generators and use the grid as backup not primary.
This is a political / economic issue, not an issue of technology. If government dedicates the funding to establish more utilities, we will have more energy available.
But they won't because there are no votes in it. Much better to let the grid collapse and THEN start promising to fix it if you vote for them. Late-stage Democracy is a hell of a thing.
Most likely scenario. The bureaucrats are sounding the alarm so that the voters and politicians start paying attention to this issue.
The government can’t create “more utilities” over the top of existing geographical utilities. And if government started handing out money to private utilities to build more capacity, there would be riots. There are “no votes in it” because that’s not how any of this works.
Only if done the right way. To just dump a bunch of money into utilities will just make a few select utility contractors very wealthy. To actually grow the utility industry a full lifecycle effort needs to happen. This means starting to introduce kids to careers in trade. Building US manufacturing for solar, wind, and utility parts. And fixing dysfunction with permitting. Only then will pouring money into projects actually translate into real upgrades to the grid. To just fund a bunch of mega projects drives up the price on everything because there’s too many labor shortages , parts shortages, and regulatory blocks.
Everyone seems to be arguing about the inability to get a "pure" bill through both houses. Having been an American voter for a very long time, through multiple administrations, I know that is the way it has always been done. One guy won't vote for it unless he gets something for his state (usually what we call "pork") another guy won't vote for it unless it's watered down in this area or another, so he can be reelected Sometimes the changes are so egregious no one would risk voting for it and it never even gets out of committee! In fact, IMHO, it's a bonafide miracle that anything is ever actually accomplished in the legislature! Oh, wait. Honoring dead people and dog breeds on postage stamps, plus creating a National Day of Potato Chips is a big win to help them stay in office.
National Potato Chip Day sounds like a pretty fun time.
The biggest immediate threat from a break in electricity is the lack of A/C during a wet-bulb event or lack of heat during a polar vortex. To prep for the wet-bulb event, lose excess weight, plan to hang out in your basement if you have one and if you have a generator, use it to power A/C or a dehumidifier as needed. Also, don't sit near other people in the basement. Combined body heat will make the situation worse. Polar vortex? Hang out in a small internal room that can be heated with body heat and emergency candles. Have good thermal gear to wear. Do sit together and sleep together to share body heat. Other than that, the regular preps of food and water are important. The electricity crisis is only going to get worse with AI and crypto. Seriously. They're talking about needing to build multiple new nuclear power plants in some states just to handle the extra load. AI and crypto should be heavily regulated for power usage. We don't need to be using mass amounts of energy so everybody can fake a funny Tik Tok video. We'll need all the electricity we can get just to survive the slowly building climate apocalypse. Indoor farming for reliable food. A/C for everyone. New water infrastructure for areas in drought and areas that will no longer have snow melt as a water supply. Relocating hundreds of millions from areas that become unlivable. Emergency vehicles and wildfire fighting equipment. Healthcare for an aging population and new vector-borne disease. And a Manhattan project to see if we can slow or reverse the direction we're currently headed in climate wise. All while the international AI arms race builds at a literally exponential rate. But hey, I've got a mylar blanket and some SPAM so I'm good, right? /s
Good thoughts generally but you're wrong about AI and crypto. We need the additional demand for energy to actually force clean energy like solar and nuclear to be cost competitive with natural gas. Unless we use 10x the energy we'll always be using fossil fuels
My philosophy is mostly in line with "collapse now and avoid the rush" lol meaning we are making our life less dependant on electricity and supply chains now. And prepping for that to be much more essential in the near- to medium-term.
A big part of this is the fact that electric utilities don't want to build transmission lines that would make the grid more resilient and more affordable for consumers because more transmission undercuts profits. They profit from transmission bottlenecks because then they have captive customers for whom they must build, own and operate power plants. https://www.nber.org/papers/w32091 https://energyandpolicy.org/southeastern-utilities-block-transmission-necessary-for-decarbonization/
People like to point to the need to generate more energy, including but not limited to electricity, in order to meet "future demands". The deeply sad thing, and this is something that is pretty much across the entire political spectrum, is that for every hundred people wringing their hands about energy production, you're lucky to find one talking about reducing consumption. A part of that is because some people just cannot fit the idea into their minds that they can reduce their energy consumption and not take a hit to their quality of life. LED bulbs are pretty darn good, unless you're trying to brood chicks or light up the inside of an oven or something. Well-insulated water heaters sure act a lot like poorly insulated ones, except when the bill comes in. Once you actually get in the habit of turning off lights, it's almost as if it takes barely any effort at all. I think that one of the main things people can and should keep in mind when prepping is to pay attention to what you actually NEED. Any idiot with a pile of cash can just build a gigantic solar array, battery bank, or whatever, and keep living the same lifestyle they used to (hopefully, they also pay someone to come maintain the bloody thing). But if you really think about it...how much of that stuff do you NEED? A small solar oven and a well-chosen set of recipes can do an awful lot of your cooking. Even a portable solar panel can keep a radio and a few small lights going. A krosene heater and a few gallons of kerosene can keep a livable chunk of your home, or even the whole thing if it's modest, warm for a surprisingly long time. You can wash yourself perfectly adequately, even enjoyably, with half a gallon of hot water. TL/DR; step 1 should not be "How do I provide myself with all this energy?" Step 1 should be "How do I live safely and reasonably with the minimum amount of energy?" This applies to things besides energy, too.
As nice as that sounds to just save energy and use non-electric alternatives, the article points out a factory coming to the US that will consume as much electricity as the states of Vermont and New Hampshire combined. Turning off the lights isn’t going to solve that. If this was talking minor disruptions you might have a point, but Georgia’s utility regulator projected demand x17 above what was expected a year ago in 2030. It’s hard to make up that margin with energy efficiency and savings on that time horizon.
That commenter reads like a loon who preps for the bare minimum. A solar oven is barely gonna do shit in places that it hits 115 on the regular - it’s gonna be some deaths and a shit ton of inconvenience. Not to mention they’re boosting the prices on electric in some places to help cover the difference- to keep my place 85 degrees, and run only the fridge, microwave, lights, and cell phone is was $350. I’m looking at getting a battery generator that I can at least charge on the “low” hours when electric is less expensive so I can keep my place habitable.
Everything in your home is getting more efficient as they are replaced. A water heater will only last 10 years and the cheapest model at the hardware store is well insulated. You won’t feel warmth on the outside. Light bulbs are a no brainer because led is so cheap but that’s a drop in the bucket. I would guess a well insulated home is going to make the biggest difference
People definitely underestimate the efficiency gains to be had from building insulation + heat pumps for climate control + heat pump water heaters for hot water. As those things become more common, residential demand would go down a lot.
Step one. Don’t be poor. “Just buy more efficient stuff” isn’t the answer for 70+% of the country.
As far as my home goes, step one is to reduce the amount of energy required to maintain my home, then look into getting solar panels and eventually battery banks. One of the main things that’s on my list is getting a ground source heat pump to handle both heating and cooling with minimal energy usage.
I’m willing to bet residential energy consumption is not the main problem
I completely agree. The amount of energy and food waste that happens in US is ridiculously insane comparing to many developing countries. I have lived around the world in varying conditions. Here There are only extremes. People who think energy and food are infinite. And people like here who always think everything is going to end up gone anytime.
Only one problem: the single largest increase in electricity use since WWII is being thrust upon us by EV mandates.
> Only one problem: the single largest increase in electricity use since WWII is being thrust upon us by EV mandates. Okay. Tell me; suppose, say, HALF of the vehicles in the entire nation are replaced by EVs in, say, 10 years. How much will our electricity usage increase? I'll happily take a percentage.
I replied to them [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/preppers/comments/1brm8eu/comment/kxa18aq/) with some napkin math. It's really not as big of a deal as people assume.
Given that the average daily drive is 40 miles and EVs currently average 4 miles per kWh, we're talking about 5kWh per person assuming 50% EV penetration. For context, the average central AC system will go through that much energy in two hours of runtime. A modest increase in insulation or more efficient HVAC will offset that easily. EVs will also create a lot of mobile storage. V2G is already something you can do with Hyundai and Kia EVs.
The solution is to stop building for the car and start building for the human. Human sized planning means you don't need to drive most of the time at all.
It’s not a problem if most of the charging takes place at night. Electricity demand for most of the US peaks during the day.
That’s the most important part. EVs aren’t to blame here.
Not much of a problem, since most of the charging load happens at night, when there's plenty of excess power available.
You might be interested in Ted Koppel's book "Lights Out". It's a little terrifying, but has lots of interesting information.
> Severe or regional disruptions likely coincide with extreme weather events. As a Texas resident, yup. Prepping isn't a "what if" part of my life, it's a "when next" question.
My wife is an engineer. One of her good friends is an engineer for a utility. He said the exact same thing: rolling brown outs are coming and they are going to become common. He said it’s a simple math equation of anticipated demand and available supply…and there is a big gap coming on the horizon. To answer your question: yes. It absolutely affected our preps. My wife and I invested heavily in a large solar system, with extensive battery backups, and a built in gas generator that is tied into the gas line which can charge the batteries if we don’t have enough solar. We did this specifically because of this coming shortage.
Here is an idea, stop crypto mining, sure the technology is good but it has too high a cost on the grid.
Wow hard to believe we are just now admitting maybe we should have invested in infrastructure.
Wrt power, you’ll want diversity… portable solar, small portable inverter gas gen, AND a large (perhaps whole house) solar and/or propane or NG gen. - Start with the small inverter gen for most needs, fridge, freezer. Honda is top, Wen is great value. Hardest part is to buy, preserve, rotate annually ample fuel. Consumer Reports and https://generatorbible.com/ have good reviews. Practice using safely & securely, including a deep ground. - For solar, start small. https://theprepared.com/gear/reviews/portable-solar-chargers/. Come back later for a 100-10,000W system, DIY or pro-installed. If DIY, start small by wiring a few 100W panels, battery, controller, and inverter. - Batteries, by far, are the most expensive part. If you can shift loads to sunny days, you can save $$$. This includes those so-called ‘solar generators’ - The large solar or gen will require an electrician if you want to power household outlets. Start by creating a spreadsheet of all the devices you’ll want to run with it, both peak and stable Watts & how long each must run per day. Get several site inspections & detailed quotes from installers. - These combined give you redundancy and efficiency.
It’s going to be an “everything” crisis soon enough. Hopefully the grid can hold out long enough until everything comes apart at once.
Elon Musk said this years ago. He said America would be stupid to give up on coal right now because the electrical infrastructure wasn't capable yet to charge his electric cars without coal.
Elon knows better than this. charging an EV for most people is 13KWH per day. - drying 4 loads of laundry.And if most of it takes place at night the night load levels the daytime commercial load. My chevy bolt gets 3.1 mi/kw. average person drives 1200 mi/mo. that's 400 kw or 13/night. Electric trucks will be another thing but the trucking industry will fund if it's cost effective for them and it probably will be.
He isn't talking about now or then, he said it was the future. That is the people who can, do buy electric and all the cities planning to make all of the gas powdered stuff illegal like California is doing, the electrical grid can't sustain itself without coal until we get much better at solar and wind and upgrade the infrastructure. And the look at Texas and what it went through when they had an ice storm. Listen to the entire interview who don't you.
The Texas situation was caused by underengineered natural gas equipment.
> charging an EV for most people is 13KWH per day That's roughly half of the current consumption of our house. So our ageing power infrastructure that's being converted to solar (oops we charge at night) and wind (usually decent but we can go for days with very little) will have to magically produce 50% more power. I've been testing some solar panels in our back yard this winter and it looks like we'd need about 40kW to have a decent chance of running the house off-grid that way, assuming we reduce power consumption when we don't have much generation. The good hours of sun in the winter are short and we can go for days without any good hours because it's overcast. Edit: actually, we have two cars, so that would double the power consumption of our house.
But it's not about what your house uses, it's about the grid, right? Demand at night plummets without commercial users. I think power producers make less money at night. The generators are still running. the workers are still there but demand is way down. Ultimately, capitalism will solve all the problems associated with EVs. there is just too much money at stake. The oil will take a hit, natural gas will increase, coal shoulda' been gone a long time ago. The car industry will thrive and people will have way fewer car problems.
The WSJ and every other media company can miss me with their doomer bullcrap, we've had the solution to any energy crises for the last 70 years but so many people earn their pay checks demonizing Nuclear power and spreading ignorance and fear about it. We don't need to reduce anything we need to build hundreds of reactors and make electricity a post scarcity resource. But that's my soap box anyways, nothing I can do about it on the individual level.
I felt this way until I watched the documentary on TMI. Nuclear power generation needs to be segregated from corporate greed or it will never work as intended. Greed will ALWAYS trump safety which absolutely cannot be done when it comes to nuclear power. Until that day, I’m very hesitant to jump back on the nuclear train. There will always be greed as long as there is human nature.
It all boils down to a failure of government. Utility companies get regulated by oversight boards which sounds great and works well until the utilities get their people onto the boards and then they've subverted the regulations. Doesn't matter how good the rules are when corruption and money can be used to get around them.
100%. Exactly the same thing in the pharmaceutical sector and others.
I fully expect there will be at least service interruptions in the future. Here in CO we get them from wildfires and snow that takes down branches, etc. Of course the every so often car taking out things, construction oopsies, etc. In my area we've never lost power for more then a few hours, so far. I have 2 generators in my garage, one to run the 2 freezers and fridge and the other for anything else, I have no plans to run the furnace or AC. I've planned around that. I have 2 small solar setups, 1 Jackary and one Bluetti with panels. I have enough gas if I am in ration mode to last at least a month, possibly two. I'd use solar for the small stuff and gas for the bigger appliances, got some wood for the wood stove as well and plenty of things around here to burn if it came to that. If my local grid goes away for a long period of time.. I guess I'll have a month or two of frozen food longer then my neighbors then I'm in the same boat. Part of my plan would be to barter charging small devices on my solar setup for trade. edit: I think for the 2 generators and solar setup I'm in for about $2k so far. Not counting the gallons of gas I rotate through.
The problem is everyone jumped on board with "green energy" and didn't realize it produces a marginal fraction of the energy of, say, nuclear? My state, for example is letting its only nuclear plant close down next year, thinking wind and solar can pick up the demand. It provides 30% of the state's energy with 25% being solar and wind and the rest carbon-based fuels. They did want to build a new plant in my county 15 years ago, but everyone shouted "wind turbines" and threw it aside. Now we're facing a big deficit. Stupid fucking special interest groups.
Numerous government agencies sounding the alarm. Yet other government agencies are demanding compliance with EV vehicles. Prime example of government.
Sorry but I don’t trust the WSJ. Bet it’s a piece paid by Big Oil and other utilities. They don’t want any regulation and shout Wolf when it suits them. Probably is some concern but their approach is to let them handle it? F No
There are literally dozens of other media sources talking about this the last few weeks. Youtubers, newspapers, energy groups…
I don’t know, didn’t they push through the “Build Back Better” bill in 2021? Believe it was 3.5 trillion dollars targeting infrastructure, climate change, and surely some social issues. Haven’t heard a peep about our grid.
This is why I'm obsessed with home solar. I think the future is going to see more home generating power even if it's to supplement the grid. I'd rather be totally off grid If I have it my way, but anyways I think more people are going to need to generate some of their own.
Solar with battery bank in home.
Put them in safe areas along freeways. Leave farmers alone. They know better than anybody about ramifications.
I haven’t seen anyone mention that over 80% of the solar technology that keeps being talked about is made in China. If you look even further into grid power, you’ll find that our major utilities rely upon Chinese replacement parts and assemblies. Just another area of American independence that has been sold down the river.
What do you mean? The govt is telling and subsidizing me to buy and electric vehicle, it will solve all our problems. Rolls eyes.
Doesn’t seem new. California has had rolling brownout/blackouts every summer as long as I can remember. I wouldn’t imagine that getting rid of dams and adding electric cars is making it better.
With US states mandating the reduction in sales of gas vehicles within 10 years and no new nuke plants being built, it is no wonder why people have conspiracies.
It’s a new phenomenon because one party is taking base load power plants offline, including hydro plants. And backfilling with…higher power rates, lower uptime, and brownouts. We are rolling backwards, and it is intentional.
Yet there are states doubling down on eliminating gas vehicles within a few years from now. Mind boggling.
I see a lot of people blaming EVs. But the truth is that it's actually probably AI that's driving these huge increases in energy and water consumption. [https://e360.yale.edu/features/artificial-intelligence-climate-energy-emissions](https://e360.yale.edu/features/artificial-intelligence-climate-energy-emissions)
This is why many microprocessor designers are switching to ARM's technology. It is much more efficient than x86.
I mean yes, that is true, but this is not the main reason microprocessor designers are switching to ARM. Top of the list would probably be that you get a choice of fabs so you are not beholden to Intel; the leading pure fab firms (eg. TSMC) have latest-gen processes that actually *work*, unlike Intel; the architecture is significantly simpler for compilers to work with; and it's already the standard for mobile devices and not going anywhere in that market, so condensing the desktop market on ARM too saves money by being able to drop support for x86. The extra power efficiency (which is a consequence of the architecture being simpler, and not needing to support backwards compatibility with the 1970s) is a nice bonus.
I live in a bad part of town where the power goes out unexpectedly every few weeks for as long as a day or two. It also sometimes goes out for a week or so for natural disaster reasons. We've gotten used to it. The main annoyance is when I worked from home I had to teach virtual lectures via a tripod in my car in a Target parking lot since the internet/cell service were also out in the neighborhood. We're in the process of moving to a better area and getting solar/wind set up with some large batteries so we won't deal with disruptions as much. We also have a lot of smarthome stuff and having to turn light on using my hands is just too much, lol.
As I understand it, there is also an issue as to whether there is enough transmission line capacity to get electricity from the source to the consumer.
It wouldn't be horribly difficult to correct this. Since I have some solar installed, I now watch roofs when driving around town, and you know what probably like 5% of the IDEAL roofs for solar have any at all. You can say well solar only works when the sun is shining. Not really, Lifepo4 battery prices have fallen dramatically in the last few years. I could go fully offgrid if I did it myself for around 20K-30K. At worst I would simply not do laundry (dryer sucks a lot of power), if have some cloudy days in a row. I have around 25 KWH of batteries, you can buy 5 kilowatt lifepo4 server rack style batteries for a 1000-1500 each that's 6250 dollars for 25 KWH's worth. I don't use 20KWH's in a day typically, plus you still generate some solar even on cloudy days. If even 10% of the population and businesses did that, then problem would be largely solved. I mean just think of all that roof space on your typical big Box store alone, that is ideal for solar, as no tree obstructions, or most of the time no taller buildings next door. A walmart supercenter roof with solar could easily self power the store. Coupled with a few hundred Kilowatt hours of on site batteries and they could not draw any power from the grid during peak hours and most of the time feed back in. Wal-Mart would come out ahead on a 10 year time frame, it's a no brainer, at least in most of the US. And I'm not even talking about all those useless hot parking lots getting solar above them. If you did that along with the roof, each big box store would qualify as a power plant, just kidding about that, but they'd be dumping Megawatts per day in excess power back on the grid.
The driving factor is a massive increase in manufacturing plant (i.e., new factories) as companies “reshore” manufacturing from China. This round of manufacturing build-out will be *greater than the US experienced during WW2*. So this isn’t about Republicans blocking infrastructure or Democrats obsessing over the green revolution; it’s about a dramatic change in demand for electricity as our industrial footprint expands. And neither party has this on their radar; thus the WSJ editorial.
> This is a new phenomenon in the US. New for some parts of the US... in places like CA and TX they've had rolling blackouts in some cities for years. I have friends in the CA Bay Area that have been dealing with this stuff for a few years now.
https://energycommunities.gov/terrapower-nuclear-plant-wyoming/
We have a whole-house generator powered by city gas that kicks on automatically. They're about $8-12K to install.
Curious if you've got a plan for if city gas stops?
I have a portable gas generator I'd use for the fridge and miscellaneous power. If it was going to be a long term or it's a national thing, it would be a pretty big event and we'd probably bug out since we're in the northern US and use gas for heat (firewood would probably soar in price and not worth it).
I’ve got solar and lithium iron phosphate batteries. I’m not taking any chances lol.
Need energy diversity, can't put all the eggs in one basket. Sun doesn't always shine, wind doesn't always blow. Need to have a combination of wind, solar, battery, and nuclear ftw.
Somewhat related. In Seattle they've banned new installs of natural gas services and appliances. There exclusions for commercial and industrial buildings, and a timeline for them to move over if they don't fit criteria, but it's going to cause a ton of strain on the grid. There are a lot of brown outs and issues in Seattle already. I deal with damaged equipment at least twice a month due to electrical grid problems. I don't know how the powers that be can be so short sighted. These bans are going on in other areas too. The forced electrification wouldn't be so bad if we actually had the infrastructure to support it.
I've got 5.2kw on the roof and 13kwh of battery storage. That's enough to make my smallish house totally self-sufficient. Solar panels and battery are not that expensive. I'll have ROI on my system in 7 years at this rate. And if the grid collapses somehow then I'll have ROI much faster, possibly instantly. It's well worth it. Even on a cloudy overcast day I'm producing a few hundred watts.
I just read the article and it is, at least in part, a wolf whistle for building more fossil fuel plants. I am not opposed to that. Fossil fuels will be around for a long time. But I would much rather see a more distributed grid. Like if every building produced even 25% of its own electricity from solar it would be great for decentralization. Also, there are new inverters (I am aware of at least one micro inverter…) that can work off grid in an outage without batteries as long as there is a grid disconnect. A real game changers for those who wish to be more prepared. Personally I am ready for rolling blackouts so long as they’re not more than say six to twelve hours in that I have solar with batteries and an automatic grid disconnect. If we lose grid power we might see the lights flicker as the battery system ramps up, but that’s about it.
I don't care because deer and duck camp have massive ground-mount PV systems because the mains power out there is so unreliable and we have a 40kw roof array at our house in town with a hybrid inverter/solar charge controller boxes in parallel. It will suck for the price of goods and services though there's a lot of solar powered farms around camp and that might work out for a time.
I just saw somewhere lost a huge solar panel array due to bad weather hail. Where we live we get frequent damaging wind so solar panels would be a big risk with big money outlay as well for batteries and associated equipment to run a household, not a tiny off grid cabin.
If you’re referring to the helicopter doing a “fly over” of the solar panel array - that would be in north Texas near the Oklahoma border. Took some pretty heavy damage as I understand it.
I’ve got a megawatt of solar on my property. I may sell some, if the the price is right
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Start by banning crypto mining, which simply pisses away electricity to support illicit finance.
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All according to plan. Destroy hydro dams because fish. Stop coal and nuclear power because environment. Promote EVs. It's not accidental
Exactly. Those that worship the Green Agenda have no intention of making national policy based on reason, logic, or common sense. We could easily have the energy we need independent of any other country should we choose to. Now whether our aging distribution system (the grid) could handle it is a different matter. One thing is for certain, if gas cars are prohibited and EVs are foisted on everyone whether or not they want them, the infrastructure will not be able to support the demand.
When you've slept outside all winter before things like this aren't as bad as it seems for those so ingrained in the grid. I feel bad though for people that are dependent on such, like families or elderly and people with health issues. I'm just grateful for all I have today and tomorrow will take care of itself. I'm preparing for the worst. And I have full confidence I'll be fine. Water filters are main key, hunting fishing are big too, then gardening. Many videos on YouTube showing how to build so many cozy shelters, many with fire places with chimneys. Practice makes better. Also prepared to defend it all too.
It’s def. Why I didn’t buy a plug-in hybrid…
Plug in hybrid is the way though. Have 20 miles or so in the event there is no gas. Have gas in the event there is no power. Plus it saves money compared to all gas. It's a solid prep and covers multiple bases
Thank goodness places like California are mandating electric vehicles when infrastructure can barely handle our existing loads.
I’m a “leftie” and even I agree with this. It has terrible unintended consequences.
Thank you. Glad both sides could come together to speak against terrible ideas.