Posted by rbanffy 6 hours ago
As admitting that solar is now a superior and cost effective means of energy means admitting that the US is no longer top dog.
As empires are built on mastering a source of energy.
the Portuguese | Dutch - mastered wind to power their ships.
the British mastered coal to power Industrial Revolution.
America mastered oil
now the Chinese have Solar.
even in places like Africa etc -- places were the grid was never available for $2k -- you can power your whole house with solar and lithium batteries. Panels are getting cheaper, same as batteries. Once the tipping point is reached for electric vehicles both personal and commercial - transition to fully electric mobility happens
I don't think I agree with this as it suggests they are doing it because they can't be bothered about it. Instead, they are doing it specifically because their (and/or their friend's) pockets are getting filled. To me, the latter is much more sinister.
American empire ruled with the petrodollar. Chinese will rule with the solaryuan if we don't get our shit together.
The big "problem" with renewables like solar is that once you've installed enough for yourself you are done for like 30 years. There is no monthly sun fee you need to keep paying. There is no solardollar, because there's nothing that needs to be extracted, transported, and sold every single day. A lot of billionaires are in an existential crisis over a world where fossil fuels are no longer the driving force of the economy. That's why we have incessant propaganda against renewable energy.
Even the solar panel market is self defeating. Once there is enough installed power the demand will drop off sharply as the refresh cycle is too long. The feedback loop of capitalism means we are likely to reach that point sooner than you would expect.
That said, don't think I'm like the nuclear power guys of the 50s who claimed that electricity would be so abundant that we wouldn't even bother to meter it. There are still costs with maintenance, repair, administration, debt servicing, and profits. If you look at your power bill today it will probably list generation, distribution, and taxes. Renewables only eliminate the generation costs, which are usually about half of the bill.
It's not going to happen soon - solar is still just 8% of world energy production. Even if solar will cover 100% of consumption on a sunny day it still would make sense to buy more panels to have enough output on a cloudy day or in the morning/evening. It's likely production of solar panels will be a good business till at least 2050 and oil business will start to decline before that unless will be propped by corrupt politicians.
Why pay the enormous maintenance cost for a continental scale grid when you can in your neighborhood have a small local grid with solar, wind and storage followed by a tiny diesel/gas turbine ensuring reliability through firming.
When deemed necessary decarbonize the firming by running it on carbon neutral fuels.
https://engaging-data.com/california-electricity-generation/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_renewab...
If silver stays above $70/oz, prices will likely go up by 5-10%.
Until Perovskite tandem technology matures, there's unlikely to be any significant reduction in PV module prices.
https://finance-commerce.com/2026/02/solar-panels-silver-to-...
The dude would have no choice but to approve it and provide funding for it.
I mean it doesn't really matter, does it? Even with 200% tariffs solar panels will still be cheapest. The entire global supply chain will move towards electrification.
The only question is whether we will be left behind or not.
The same elites that were telling us we can't have electric cars because the power grid can't support them are now building massive data centers for AI which they think will allow them to completely ignore the working class.
I hope we are in a similar era with regards to climate change. Surely there's a lot of money to be made in harnessing effectively unlimited renewable energy that literally falls from the sky like manna. With a bit of social pressure we should be able to extinct the fossil fuel industry in my opinion.
More or less.
Adam Smith famously wrote that slavery was economically detrimental way back in 1776. It still took nearly 100 years to abolish slavery, and even to this day, people still equate slavery with prosperity (as implied by that controversial 1612 Project article, for example).
Another way to think about it, the South did not embrace slavery because it made them richer; the South embraced slavery because they opposed industrialization. Southerners would regularly complain about the hustle and bustle of the North, the size of the cities, and how hard regular (white) people had to work. The "Southern way of life" was a thing - a leisurely, agrarian society based on forced labor and land instead of capital.
In this regard it's a doubly fitting metaphor because much of the opposition to abolishing slavery was cultural and not economic.
Slavery had basically been a thing for all of human history up to that point, and based on my discussions on HN many smart people don't believe a lot of what Adam Smith said. There are still a lot of basic economic ideas that would make people much wealthier that struggle to get out into the wild. With that perspective the near-total abolition of slavery in a century seems pretty quick. And it can't really be a social thing because it is clear from history that societies tolerate slavery if it makes sense.
And we see what happened to the people who tried to maintain slavery over that century - they ended up poor then economically, socially and historically humiliated.
Adam Smith also differentiated between different levels of slavery - that Roman slavery was different than Serfdom was different from chattel slavery in the US.
It's worth noting that Adam Smith did not think total abolition was possible. One of his concerns about free markets was that people deeply desired control of other people, and slavery would increase as a byproduct of wealth.
This is of course nothing compared to the cruelty of real slavery but the effect is much the same, a lot of people are working their asses of for an upper class that can ruin their lives at the drop of a hat. That there are no whips involved is nice but it also clearly delineated who was the exploiter and who were the exploited. That's a bit harder to see today.
> Slavery had basically been a thing for all of human history up to that point,
Except that of course it wasn't.
> and based on my discussions on HN many smart people don't believe a lot of what Adam Smith said.
And many smart people do.
> There are still a lot of basic economic ideas that would make people much wealthier that struggle to get out into the wild.
Yes, such as the one that wealth is not very good as a context free metric for societal success.
> With that perspective the near-total abolition of slavery in a century seems pretty quick.
You missed that bit about the war. If not for that who knows where we'd be today.
> And we see what happened to the people who tried to maintain slavery over that century - they ended up poor then economically, socially and historically humiliated.
Yes, they relied on the misery of others to drive their former wealth, but they are not the important people in that story. The important people are the ones that were no longer slaves.
And never mind that many of those former slave owners did just fine economically afterwards, after all, they already were fantastically wealthy so they just switched 'business models' and still made money hand over fist.
"“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world....Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.”
Georgia
"“The prohibition of slavery in the Territories… is destructive of our rights and interests.”
> Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin
Also, they clearly make the case that cotton was the most important good in the world, perhaps imploring the intercession of foreign powers.
I think it's worth pointing out though that these people were not being honest with themselves - nothing in their argument about the importance of cotton suggests it couldn't have been done with wage labor. They are dancing around the fact that only a very few benefit from slavery.
Without the cotton gin, chattel slavery would have probably ended at least one generation earlier in the US
- "These people categorically did not want to start a farm; otherwise they would not have been facing famine." The vast majority of immigrants to the US at this time WERE farmers who were not allowed to own land in Europe. The reason they came to the North instead of the South is because they were largely not allowed to settle anywhere East of the Appalachians in the South. The South was staunchly anti-immigrant and barely had any cities at the time.
- At the outbreak of war, the Union army was almost entirely made up of American born volunteers. Later, immigrant brigades were enlisted, but most were highly regarded and commended and still made up less than half of the army.
- Your explanation cutely ignores the fact that Southern troops fired first in the Civil War
New Orleans has entered the chat.
Please tell me more on your theories regarding these immigrants.
The only ones I'm aware of were Irish immigrants. Most of them were urban dwellers, not farmers. The Irish who were farmers were generally working on farms owned by the English.
I'm not saying we shouldn't read historical documents. I'm saying to not apply the same skepticism you would apply to modern media to old media is a mistake.
Here's specifically what Adam Smith had to say in the Wealth of Nations:
> But if great improvements are seldom to be expected from great proprietors, they are least of all to be expected when they employ slaves for their workmen. The experience of all ages and nations, I believe, demonstrates that the work done by slaves, though it appears to cost only their maintenance, is in the end the dearest of any. A person who can acquire no property, can have no other interest but to eat as much, and to labour as little as possible. Whatever work he does beyond what is sufficient to purchase his own maintenance can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own.
Later, to explain this trap of why people insist on owning slaves even if paying workers would be more productive in the long run:
> "The pride of man makes him love to domineer, and nothing mortifies him so much as to be obliged to condescend to persuade his inferiors. Wherever the law allows it, and the nature of the work can afford it, therefore, he will generally prefer the service of slaves to that of freemen."
Human slavery might be one of the few exceptions to this. People can reproduce and create more people provided they are given the bare necessities of life. As long as you could keep the enslaved under control, you would have new slaves you could constantly sell and they mostly took care of themselves.
Honestly it sounds like a great life for an unambitious, lazy person. Maybe we’ll all be able to experience something similar when humanoid robots are commonplace in the future. Find an isolated piece of land with a few robots. Make them grow food and commercial crops. Raise some animals. Live a life of relative self sufficiency and leisure.
Too capable (but also valuable!) slaves tend to be self sufficient and strong enough to throw you off.
Too weak (and therefore non-valuable!) slaves tend to be easy to control - but are a huge drain on the system, including ‘master’ management, which is often the most constrained resource anyway in any hierarchical system.
In other words, if you remove the people that earned the least (close to nothing) the overall income per capita goes up? If you exclude the non nobles I am sure the middle ages had a very high GDP too
And being comfortable doing it via slave labor is cultural.
> if you exclude the enslaved, the south had a higher GDP per capita
If you exclude the murders, Ted Bundy was a really nice guy.
The wind and the water, both rather limited to specific activities (milling, sailing). And the power of human and animal muscle. Where the animals are stronger, but also much dumber, so most of the actual hard work has to be done by human hands.
Basically all the settled civilizations used some sort of non-free or at best semi-free labour. Villeiny, serfdom, prisoners of war, slavery of all sorts, or having low castes do the worst work.
And given that humans are very good at rationalizing away their conditions, the cultures adapted to being comfortable with it, even considering the societal inequality as something ordained by the gods or karma.
Oxen? Paid laborers? It's not like the American South was unique in needing farm workers.
> Basically all the settled civilizations used some sort of non-free or at best semi-free labour.
The South was notable in clinging to slavery long after it had been abolished elsewhere.
> And given that humans are very good at rationalizing away their conditions, the cultures adapted to being comfortable with it, even considering the societal inequality as something ordained by the gods or karma.
Good, then we agree; it was at least in part cultural.
In other words, animal and human muscle, we agree on that.
I didn't claim that all human labour was non-free, far from that. Every classical civilization had paid artisans and employees as well.
But the paid professions tended to be the skilled ones, and the non-free ones tended to be the arduous, backbreaking ones.
"The South was notable in clinging to slavery long after it had been abolished elsewhere."
Elsewhere where? If I look at the timeline of slavery abolition on Wikipedia, it seems that the South was not even the last holdout in the Americas, much less worldwide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slave...
They were about as delayed as Russia. (Serfdom in Russia was not quite slavery, but brutal and backward nonetheless.)
And the timeline of slavery abolition seems to dovetail with the expansion of the Industrial Revolution across the globe quite tightly, or not?
"it was at least in part cultural."
Chicken, egg. This is a system stretching over millennia with endless feedback loops. Runaway slaves may become the masters (such as the Aztecs) and vice versa, developing their own justifications why it happened.
Sure. My objection is to the slavery bit, not the "humans doing work" bit.
> But the paid professions tended to be the skilled ones, and the non-free ones tended to be the arduous, backbreaking ones.
There were plenty of non-slave manual laborers throughout history. Doubly so for chattel slavery of the sort practiced in the South.
> Elsewhere where? If I look at the timeline of slavery abolition on Wikipedia, it seems that the South was not even the last holdout in the Americas, much less worldwide.
What we'd now call the developed world.
That article lists many restrictions and abolitions of the practices hundreds of years prior to the 1860s. The Russians you mention managed it in 1723; Massachusets deems it unconstitional in 1783. By the 1860s still having it as a properous nation was pretty weird.
In 1861.
> Peter the Great converts all house slaves into house serfs, effectively making slavery illegal in Russia.
1861 ditches serfdom, too.
The developed world of now is much more extensive than the developed world of the 1860s, and the South was very backward until the 1950s or so. In the 1850s, it was seriously lagging behind the North in industrial power, which is one of the reasons why they lost the war. This would point to a yet another chicken-and-egg problem. Nonfree labour tends to cement premodern societal and economic structures, which perpetuate existence of non-free labour, unless disrupted from the outside. The Islamic world didn't give up slavery voluntarily either.
I am not sure if we can call the South of the 1860s "developed", even relatively to the rest of the Western civ. By what criteria?
"The Russians you mention managed it in 1723"
Serfdom in Russia was abolished after the Crimean War, and the Tsar used the money gained by the Alaska Purchase to pay off part of the due compensations to the nobles.
Yes, these institutions were not equal. Different cultural and historical development. Still, a Russian serf of the 1850s was a very non-free person, tied to the land and dependent on whims of his lord or lady. Few would care if a drunk noble whipped him to death, even though theoretically he should not be doing that. A rough equivalent in category.
When it comes to anything sophisticated done by qualified people, like "making advanced tools for the Führer", the options for subtle sabotage are there and pissed-off people will use them.
In general, German occupation authorities had better results when they actually paid the workers and gave them vacation vouchers. But of course the racial theories got in the way, as it was unthinkable to treat, say, Jews as normal employees.
I am not aware of anyone like Kapica or Kolmogorov producing their best results in a penal camp.
OTOH we have a notorious railway tunnel in Prague from the 1950s, designed by imprisoned engineers. Guess what, it is half a foot too narrow to put two tracks into. Someone got the last laugh.
Another fun anecdote related to Theremin:
> Theremin invented another listening device called The Thing, hidden in a replica of the Great Seal of the United States carved in wood. In 1945, Soviet school children presented the concealed bug to the U.S. Ambassador as a "gesture of friendship" to the USSR's World War II ally. It hung in the ambassador’s residential office in Moscow and intercepted confidential conversations there during the first seven years of the Cold War, until it was accidentally discovered in 1952.
Interesting life in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Theremin
And yet, we invent things like the cotton gin, "enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation", patented in 1794.
Because the efficiency increase in that part of the process meant we could grow so much more cotton to be processed. It wasn't very profitable before that, because slave labor wasn't very efficient at the process.
(This led, eventually, to more automation of the planting/harvesting process.)
That doesn't tell the whole story though. If you own 100 slaves, you need to spend nonzero resources maintaining them, or else they will starve and then you have zero slaves. So the owner has less wealth than the equivalent person in the North that has the same income but zero slaves. You can't directly compare GDP per capita excluding enslaved people.
I do agree with your broader point about usage of labor and how being able to have leisure via slavery is economic.
I really dislike this idea that slavery was just a cultural aberration and not economic. For one thing, that lightens the moral stain of slavery adjacent activity, most notably colonialism and the exploitation of the colonies. This never went away. Economic colonialism exists to this day. We just call it “outsourcing”, “offshoring” and “subcontracting”.
Consider as just one example the lawsuit over child slavery against Nestle, etc [1]. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Nestle can't be held responsible for the child slavery even though they have full knowledge of it happening. Go figure. In fact, that's what they pay for.
The whole shipbreaking industry in Bangladesh is incredibly dangerous for those involved and couldn't possibly be done in any developed nation.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/12/m...
If you ignore the part that makes you wrong, then you are right.
Yeah because your "capita" is severely undercounted.
If I exclude every who dont live in New York, USA has astonishing GDP per capita ... because I am assigning each person production of many. Same thing.
I don't think this gets talked about enough because its truly a milestone.
It's still more expensive in colder places, but the math is changing very fast.
Taking Europe versus China, California versus Texas, it seems like social pressure is less effective than markets. Let markets build the power source they want to build and lo and behold you get lots of solar and wind and batteries.
Solar is historically a great example where public / private collaboration actually had a place. Even if today it’s time to let market forces work.
How do markets build infrastructure as large as an LNG terminal without the government tipping the scales with various guarantees? How do you build a literal coastline of refineries without government clearing the way with permissive regulations? How can you say "let markets figure it out" when the US military is the acquisition department of Halliburton's Iraqi joint venture?
Pretending "markets can figure it out if we just remove government subsidies" is hopelessly naiive. Geopolitics is mostly energy policy.
Nobody argued as much. My point is the net effect of social pressure on the energy transformation has been costly—financially and politically—for relatively little bang.
A whole class of parasites who have made their lives as highwaymen on the densest energy source (outside of uranium) -- that literally comes out of the ground -- have spent at least the last 20 years actively suppressing alternatives.
In some places (see Alberta, Canada), they have literally outlawed renewable developments.
In this context political advocacy, education, and subsidy remain absolutely imperative.
There is no "free market" way out of the current situation regardless of how economically viable solar is. In the real world markets and power are intrinsically linked.
It's also actually also an emergency
On the contrary, historians broadly agree that industrialization (particularly the advent of the cotton gin) actually turbocharged the human trafficking industry in the US. The cotton gin moved the bottleneck for textile production onto enslaved people, since there was no automation available for planting, cultivating, or harvesting the cotton.
Slavery also displaces industry in the economy. Slave-driven industries compete with industrial development for investment funds and production driven by slave labor can compete with mechanized production. But if labor is suddenly expensive, mechanized production has an advantage, and if former slaves are now getting paid there are also more customers for the output of that production.
So industrialization may have played some role in abolition, but did abolition also drive industrialization? Slavery was abolished in Britain in the early 19th century and Britain was also the cradle of the industrial revolution, which started to hit very shortly after. America did not explode industrially until after it abolished slavery.
If we'd abolished slavery in Roman times we might have terraformed Mars by now.
They’ll fight tooth and nail
not crazy especially as slavery was supplanted by debt, which is in a way fractional slavery (minus the chattel part ofc)
The current political landscape has me black pilled but on the technology side we have a lot to look forward to.
With that you get flying cars, space tourism, AI, cities in deserts with free water through desalination, better indoor climates with freer ventilation with the outside, cities skies free of ICE smog and probably a whole lot of things which are hard to imagine.
Alternatively, it could mean that we would no longer need to do that as a lot of materials that are restricted by energy costs become viable. If energy is almost free you can extract a lot of trace materials from almost anywhere.
> Surely there's a lot of money to be made in harnessing effectively unlimited renewable energy that literally falls from the sky like manna
China has solar panel production on lock. Nobody is going to make money there.
So from a western point of view, there is only a LOT of money to be lost by going solar. Anyone that invested in oil and gas, coal and even to a lesser degree nuclear is NOT going to go quietly.
Hence all the climate change denial and anti-renewable rhetoric from the current US regime
(To be clear I personally have my roof covered in panels and also hope like mad we can get everyone on board)
You still need to feed them, clothe them, and house them.
You need to do basic medical care.
And now you have the problem that most of them would happily murder you in your sleep/if your back is turned, or run away never to be found. So the tend to be a pretty big security risk.
Oh, and also they’re slaves so good luck getting them to care about their work - way worse than a typical new hire retail employee even. So you need to do heavier supervision.
Oh, and you had to pay to acquire them - instead of give them an offer and pay them after they’ve worked for you successfully. So add that to the ‘risk’ pile.
I also never found the economic argument entirely convincing. If slavery were so economically disadvantageous in an industrialized society, why are there still slave labor in industrialized countries around the world today?
Estimated on the economics of slavery (that I’ve read anyway) seemingly ignore that slaves can make new slaves.
This is the dark side of slavery that seems to be rarely discussed. That is, the mass rape of slaves over centuries by their owners.
There was even an economic incentive for this because lighter skinned slaves were more desirable for domestic labor. By the 19th century this had gotten so absurd that some slaves were almost indistinguishable from white people due to generations of repeated rape, basically.
There was a book whose name escapes me that analyzed the records of one of the largest slave markets and it found that the price of girl slaves went way once they started menstruating. This was advertised. Why do you think that was?
We would line in a very different country if, after the civil war, every slave owner was strung up from a tree and their estates were redistributed to the formerly enclaved.
oh mate
Yeah, but not for the reasons you think. A country that would just kill a significant share of its citizens for something that used to be legal very recently is not going to end up just fine. Moreover, due to normal distribution of human traits the next generation would have the same percentage of 'evil' with or without your well-intentioned genocide.. go figure.
I really don't understand why you're bringing slavery in a discussion about hydro. Why not bring Gaza? And Iran? This is a tech site after all: so, sure, bringing slavery in a talk about solar energy makes sense.
Note that the abolition of slavery is unrelated to industrialization: the islamic republic of Mauritania was the last country to officially abolish slavery and they did it in the 1980s. And it's very well known that slavery still persisted long after that and there are still people owning slaves today (not too sure why the other comment mentioning it was downvoted).
At this point I think people are just insane: they'll use any excuse, on any unrelated subject, to bring it the issues of slavery, patriarchy, Gaza (but not Iran), etc. But as soon as you point out actual patriarchal societies operating today or actual slavery still happening today or people having actual sex slaves in western countries (e.g. several members of the UK parliament are now running an enquiry into a gigantic gang-rapes operation with thousands of victims and an attempted cover-up by the authorities and the findings are beyond belief).
"Won't hear, won't see, won't speak -- shall only mention slavery, the patriarchy, Gaza and shall downvote".
HN is truly lost.
I'm struggling to understand the level of completely irrational rejection of reality in all these comments.
Emissions continue rise every year, we are already locked into extreme climate change, multiple nations are engaged in military conflicts to capture oil, we globally use more fossil fuels every year.
Companies are starting to convert jet engines into natural gas powered generator for AI data centers [0]
So far we've continually used 'green' energy to supplement the use of non-renewable fossil fuels. We have far more EVs on the road than we did a few years ago and are using more oil than before in the US (and producing more than we ever have).
We are already out of the standard IPC scenarios and potentially on track for a 'hot house earth' future [1].
It is quite clear that we are ramping up for global war over natural resources (largely fossil fuels) and we will burn the planet to the ground chasing the last drop of oil.
0. https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/how-jet-engines-are-...
1. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/11/point-of...
My overlay of the data: https://eia.languagelatte.com/
Raw data: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/topic/0
If I were doing this I'd be looking for a partner that is already in the business. The politics are a lot more complicated than the technology. It would be very easy to get screwed over if you don't know which palms to grease.
> "But what will we eat?" is a propaganda point that you will hear a lot even though it's totally bogus.
Indeed. The US farms almost 60 million acres for biofuels, the size of the state of Oregon. These arguments do not come from serious people imho. People are simply married to their rural identity and ag cosplay, despite it being wildly inefficient and subsidized by the federal government.
https://kaufman.substack.com/p/at-least-31-states-consider-o...
https://cleantomorrow.org/reports/
(have installed 100kw+ in residential solar, and have experience following along for a ~100MW project)
Even the hardware, land acquisition, and permitting stories would be different, right?
We have generation mix, load, and pricing data. Both real time and historical
How often does this get updated?
We collect from a lot of sources, so nearly every minute something is updating.
I’m trying to source a battery power pack and cheap panels.
Assuming you're in the US, new solar modules go for about $0.28/watt.
If you dump the entire $1k into just modules, that will get you about 3.5kW of panels. Which will probably hit your target on sunny days during the summer.
But that doesn't include inverters if you want to do a grid tie, or batteries if you don't, or wiring, or whatever you're going to mount the panels on.
Another way to think about this is that $1,000 is about 20 tanks of gas, assuming you get 400 miles per tank that's 8,000 miles, which is less than a year of driving for the average American. You can increase your budget and still come out way ahead.
The other consideration is that this scheme only works if you only drive at night, otherwise you'll need a battery to store that power while your car is out and about during the day, or you'll need to grid tie and use the grid as your battery.
Essentially co-dependant renewables, the entirety of West Coast through Colorado balancing primarily between solar and hydro (and natgas peakers). Nothing like Québec (¡hydro!), but still something.
[0] <https://i.imgur.com/QMclWZu.png> grey "other" line == sold to neighboring grids
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If ERCOT ("Texas") would get over their independant grid "benefits" [i.e. not having to follow federal regulations], they could be sloshing their primarily wind-derived kWHs into an even more-beautiful grid of flowing renewables.
Instead, 10-year winter storms risk hundreds dead and billion$ lo$t.
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TVA is in planning stages for its second massive pump-storage facility — but Texas is probably wiser in its nascent battery storage investment [1], instead. TVA's Racoon Mountain Pumphouse is definitely impressive, but with all the upcoming "depleted" car batteries being reconditioned into the stationary electric storage market... water power storage is probably the more environmentally-damaging method (definitely more expensive?).
[1] <https://imgur.com/a/Nm0TFs1>
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Screenshots via <https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electr...>
[nerd warning: my favorite real-time dataset]
US Lower-48 Primary Energy Sourcing: <https://i.imgur.com/BWXugy2.png>
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My layperson recommendations to industry [I'm blue-collar, electrician]: reduce coal, increase nuclear; increase micro battery storage (e.g. see Chattanooga's EPB implementations); maintain but stop building dams/pumped storage.
Solar/wind/nuclear/nat.gas will be able to run everything once we have enough battery storage to handle daily peaks. In a few more years we will be entirely able to remove our dependance from toxic coal [2]
Currently, even though it pains me to say this, ERCOT has one of the most mature battery systems in the world.
Everything else is valid though.
As a fifth-generation former Texan, I understand "separatist mentality." ERCOT's buy/sell market is perhaps also the most purely capitalistic marketplace in existance (and among least-regulated, in first-world); for these reasons, winter-proofing funding is terrible and outages likely when the system is stressed (e.g. approximately every decade Texas loses power during winter storms) — which is also when generating profits are maximized (orders of magnitude increases).
Certain deregulated-market Texans are still paying off powerbills from years-old storms, a few cold days of billing often exceeding the rest of the year's usage.
plus it seems ERCOT has learned and the grid seems fine now
Imgur is temporarily over capacity. Please try again later.See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Control_Dam
Given the current state of the Upper Colorado River basin snow pack, there is a not-insignificant chance that Lake Powell will recede below a minimum power generating level by the end of this year for the first time ever.
I'd expect there's not a big effect on the ultimate amount of water being released downstream either way.
The max is like a car engine’s redline. That the car can hit it doesn’t mean you should at all times.
From that https://youtu.be/jvnaiHFT6nQ is a visualization of the water releases for the river to allow the water to get to the right dam for the anticipated power use.
7MW is the amount of power you can get from a couple of diesel gensets, waaaay smaller than even a small power plant
[https://www.cat.com/en_US/products/new/power-systems/electri...]
edit: Parent got edited; it was talking about $0.02/kwh initially.
Who are the best companies doing this right now in New England? What products are folks using to store electricity? Are there any good resources for this kind of thing?
tesla isn't great value any more. For a while powerwalls were the shit And the powerwall three is nice, with direct DC charging as well as islanding.
But, only 13kwh still, and internet dependency, and very expensive.
I currently have enphase micro inverters and a power wall 2. It was the right mix at the time.
But, if you have the space, which I think you do, An insulated shed for a 19" rack, and choose any one of the many battery unit makers. Its about $200 per kwh now (in UK prices, I'm not sure what tarrifs are doing for you)
then get a frame for your solar (or build a barn and roof it with solar, its cheaper than 12mm plywood at the moment.)
Have micro inverters, they are more expensive, but solid state, less likely to catch fire, do MPPT better, and are not a single point of failure.
You'll need backup for when solar doesn't cover your daily needs, so either grid or some other power source.
For the panels I did whatever was cheapest on signature solar. For batteries and inverter I did eco-worthy. (eBay for that, they run sales pretty often) in total is was $1000 for the panels (that included delivery) and around $1200 for the battery and inverter. If you have a truck then you might be able to find cheaper panels locally.
On YouTube check out DIY Solar Power with Will Prowse. He is a certified electrician and publishes part lists and plans that are easy to follow.
I like the MidNite solar controllers.
LiFePO4 batteries are great, with a few caveats:
- you must use batteries from the same batch, ie you can't upgrade capacity piecemeal, to avoid degrading the new ones
- cable lengths are important because even small differences in resistive losses between batteries can mean that one battery is doing more charging / discharging
- you can't charge below 0\*C, which I'm assuming could be a problem in New EnglandIf you're permanently there, it shouldn't be a concern. Sounds like modern BMS can disable charging at low temperatures so maybe not a worry for you at all if you're buying new batteries.
You dont need a company to do this for you, unless you want pay $$ to connect wires.
From what I've heard Tesla has a high cost/energy storage rate and you'd be better of going with something else (even if you have a tesla) but it would boil down to are you wanting to set this up yourself or hire a professional to do all the wiring.
>Does anybody have suggestions or advice on how to do this?
Pay a land use consultant or lawyer $500-$1k to go over you idea with you. There is a reason you do not see people DIYing land development that is not residential. You will likely find that the least terrible way to do what you're asking is to build some sort of minimal cabin or something to get the whole project to be residential. Even then you will likely have to dial back your clearing a lot and structure the project in multiple phases over many years to not incur non-starter level costs.
You're gonna learn more about the clean water act than you ever wanted to know.