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Why Elon Musk's Batteries Frighten Electric Companies
JoeyRox writes: The publicized goal of Tesla's "gigafactory" is to make electric cars more affordable. However, that benefit may soon be eclipsed by the gigafactory's impact on roof-top solar power storage costs, putting the business model of utilities in peril. "The mortal threat that ever cheaper on-site renewables pose" comes from systems that include storage, said physicist Amory Lovins. "That is an unregulated product you can buy at Home Depot that leaves the old business model with no place to hide."
So, what evidence is there that electric companies are scared? Sounds like just the contention of a greeny.
Why the customers should care? It's called progress : jobs are created and others are closed... Personally I don't give a fsck about what's going to happen to utilities... Even if my own job is at risk (I'll find another).
I can't call that English
Still, the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group representing America’s investor-owned utilities, recently announced that its members will help to encourage electric vehicle use by spending $50 million annually to buy plug-in service trucks and invest in car-charging technology. “Advancing plug-in electric vehicles and technologies is an industry priority,” said EEI President Thomas Kuhn.
Uh, "advancing as a priority" is actually the opposite of fear.
Southern California Edison is planning to spend about $9.2 billion through 2017 to allow the two-way flow of electricity on its system, said Edison International CEO Ted Craver. “We are certainly big supporters of electric transportation,” Craver said. He added: “That electric car isn’t just going to stay at home. It’s going to go other places. It’s going to need to get charged in other places. And I think our ability to provide that glue for all those things that are going to plug into that network is really how we see our core business.”
Again, sounds positive. Actually the only negative thing in the article is that electric cars might cause a load our infrastructure isn't ready for -- to the contrary a solar charging station in the home would mitigate this. Is the new journalism format to title your articles with a thesis directly contrary to all the actual evidence you're about to present?
My work here is dung.
Why focus only on the fear? Better battery technology would be an incredible benefit for some utilities. They could store some of their excess generation output at non-peak times and sell that electricity later on at times of peak demand. They could increase ROI on existing capital investments by delaying, for years, any need for new generation equipment, all while selling the electricity for (potentially) a higher price. Why wouldn't they love these batteries?
Learn about the super tricks the Electric Companies don't want you to know about!
The batteries arn't magic and if you live in a part of the world that doesn't get much sun then you'll still be using mains power. And thats before you factor in the cost of installing all this in the average home - solar cells are NOT cheap. And what if you don't even own your own home or live in a block of flats where you have no say in how your electricity is delivered?
Just another silicon valley off-with-the-fairies puff peace.
If you hit tier 5 in California, you pay around $0.50 per kwh. At that price they need to be afraid of the generator isle at Home Depot, even with $4/gas...
I'd almost feel bad but since the government sold us out to big money on that front good i hope that industry gets fucking destroyed.
Shit, if you could get an 85KW storage system with a decent support plan in place, then you'd see large scale electric grids wither in all but the most densely populated areas. Solar/Wind Charging during the day, comfortable power at night and when the recharge capabilities diminish beyond a certain point they come and swap it out for another storage system. Yeah if I were one of the big electric conglomerates I'd be nervous too. Adapt or die.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Batteries made for cars aren't going to be very good for housing. They die too soon. It'd be better to use nickel-iron batteries. Those really last. The problem with using them on cars is low energy density, but for housing it's great. You just have to replace the liquid every decade or so.
How fast until his business model is made illegal?
Seriously... that's the way it works in the USA right now. Everyone is pro free market until their business model gets twacked by new technology.
But all I see putting the Utilities business model in jeopardy is inept management and political pandering. Rooftop solar and battery storage cannot even begin to compete with efficient central generation and distribution. Utilities however have no incentive to run an efficient organization. For decades that have been drunk on the power of captive rate-payers, with no competitive pressure to be efficient. Rooftop solar and batteries threaten to bring that competition to the game. Modern utilities are so bloated and inefficient that the rooftop solar and battery combination is a threat despite being much less efficient. So yeah, utilities are scared, but not for the reasons, or in the manner the Solar proponents claim, but scared they will have to grow up, and abandon the monopoly model and actually run an efficient business. Competition always frightens the monopolist.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/16/3427392/oklahoma-fee-solar-wind/
http://www.newsmax.com/US/tax-on-the-sun-solar-power-State-Corporation-Commission-Appalachian-Power/2014/12/02/id/610629/
An EXTRA charge to offput any profit loss. Let that word sink in: profit
Electric utilities would in fact love local storage for solar rooftops. The big technical problem for them is that when a cloud goes over an area, all the electricty being pumped back into the grid suddenly drops drastically and the power company has to have generation capacity to add in within seconds to avoid brown outs. By having even 30 minutes worth of storage in the home, the batteries could fill in for the local drop and ease the imapct on the power company.
This is becoming a very big problem in Germany now and there are companies whose sole business is to supply incredibly expensive (thousands of dollars per kilowatt hour in some cases) electricity within a few seconds notice. I believe there was even a bloomberg article on this a few months ago.
Goddamn liberals will regulate the hell out of Tesla until its out of business. Look no further than the dealership vs direct sales debacle.
/. liberal bias, I got karma to burn.
This is bullshit, I dont want my tax dollars wasted on stupid legislation o line some poliician's pockets. Let the free market sort it out.
And fuck
Straigth to their cronies to pass legislation and levies on home-grown power. Your brave new world pays ... THEM.
Exactly. Self-sufficiency is the future and holy grail of utilities. Imagine how wonderful it will be when every household can generate its own power and we can ditch the clumsy, expensive, archaic model of centralized utilities. It may not happen within our lifetimes, but you can bet your house it will become possible one day, and the only thing that can stop it (as you hinted) is coercive authority (government). Someday even water and sewage will be produced and destroyed on-site. I don't know how, but only 100 years ago, most of the technology we take for granted today was unimaginable, just like the things I am describing are unimaginable today.
This will revolutionize the grid. I was reading that lithium ion batteries are around $500/kWh right now wholesale (and I've seen some you can buy from China that make me believe that's roughly true). Then there's a projected cost as low as $180/kWh in about 5 years after Tesla's factory ramps up (and no doubt others start to come online).
Right now (in Ontario) I can buy peak electricity at about 13 cents per kWh and maybe 7 or 8 cents per kWh at night. Imagine a system of batteries where I buy power at night, store it, and then use that during the day. I worked the rough numbers and at today's battery prices I'd be hard pressed to get a return on my investment in 20 years, and that's only considering battery cost. However, if you use $180/kWh, suddenly you might see the payback period on a system like that drop below 10 years, and if I can do it at that price, what can a utility do with its economy of scale?
The addition of economical grid-level storage will radically change the way the utilities run their business. You won't need so much idle generating capacity such as natural gas or coal sitting around to service peak loads because you can charge up your battery banks at night using nuclear and during the day with solar and consume them during the peak periods.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Google says the average US home used 10,837 kWh in 2012. On average that is about 30 kWh per day. The smaller Tesla battery pack is 60 KWh. As a first guess that 60 KWh battery seems like a reasonable size battery pack for an energy efficient home in the US. Especially if you have a generator as backup to improve reliability and help with rainy weeks.
This is the problem with all tablet, cell phone, and all other lithium-based batteries. THEY ALL FAIL! In fact you're lucky if a laptop battery lasts 2 years. I don't know why lithium is so unreliable compared to lead-acid but the whole technology is garbage. Have you ever heard of a lithum-based APC UPS? Of course not! It's like $100-180 to get a legitimate replacement lithium battery for a laptop and it barely lasts 200 recharge cycles if you're lucky.
Elon claims his batteries last 10 years but of course they can't prove it and others say that's just not true. They also lose capacity over time and I do not mean a long period of time. A well made capacitor is rated for 18 years and can technically last 100 years easily. We need 100 year batteries, or at least ones that don't diminish 10% in one year. I don't care if it takes a small shed full of batteries if I don't have to buy replacements for decades.
I have one question about the so-called "fright" of the electric companies: were they - or were they not - specifically observed quaking in their boots? If they were not, please don't expect an indictment from the Grand Jury.
I think it's great that someone is trying to advance battery storage technology. Tesla finds itself in a position to have a real vested interest in doing so, for the sake of improving sales of its vehicles AND because it opens up a whole new area they can market products to (PV solar owners who want to charge batteries for power storage to use when the sun isn't shining).
The hype come in with all of these statements about power companies being scared by it, and it putting existing business models in peril.
Frankly, that's a load of B.S. for the foreseeable future.
For starters, this stuff has very high up-front costs. There's no way around the fact that storing enough electricity to power an entire home for a whole night (or longer if it's rainy and cloudy all day, so solar isn't generating a whole lot of power) requires some big batteries. Right now, most people could honestly see a lot more savings/return on investment by reducing their power consumption before even thinking about any of this stuff. (How many homes are still full of older appliances that use as much as 2-3x the amount of power as new, high-efficiency alternatives? What about buying the most efficient furnace or heat-pump or A/C unit available? People say they can't justify or "afford" it because you know... it might cost several thousand dollars to upgrade it. But even $7-8K for a new central A/C and furnace isn't even coming close to what one of these battery storage systems will cost you. And what about replacing all those incandescent or halogen bulbs in the house with low wattage LED versions?)
The people buying this stuff anywhere in the near future are just the "early adopters" who have other motivations besides proof of pure financial savings. Heck, even if you could eek out a small net savings with this stuff -- you could *probably* just invest that money wisely and see more return that way.
Batteries are still too expensive & battery storage (even from solar panels) does not compete & CANNOT compete with our utility grid system.
Also if Germany was SO successful , solar companies over there (with federal help) would not go bankrupt!
Please do not trust Bloomberg, he has an agenda...
They do not like anything that winds up with them selling fewer electrons. They don't even like cogeneration. When I was a reporter, writing about the electric industry about ten years ago, at the time the industry was saying they would help large businesses implement cogeneration to achieve greater efficiency, I learned about the "cogen killers" - people working for the electric producers who would on the sly, go and pressure large businesses to NOT implement cogeneration. This industry is rife with this kind of thing, so I would suggest you take anything one of their PR people says with a gigantic grain of salt, and then start following the money.
In other words, they powers that be will nerf the fuck out of peoples ability to produce/sell/buy these batteries. Because fuck you that's why!
"If you love someone, set them free. If they come home, set them on fire." - George Carlin
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It is very much possible the utility companies may be able to stymie and delay the solar adoption in USA, but rest of the world will pay premium prices, and pay off the installation costs of these factories. So when the dam breaks and they start flooding the market, there is nothing that will save the utilities.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
These are tenant protection laws. These laws are designed to protect tenants from shitty landlords who will refuse to fix water or sewer or electrical problems. This isn't a "fuck you for being off the grid". Now, they need to be revisited when rooftop solar and storage become adequate for a reasonable standard of living for a tenant, but these are tenant protection laws, and are much better for society than not having them.
Panasonic make batteries for everyone, Elon is just a another customer (on credit)
One of the things that has been driving battery development is size and weight. Basically the higher the power density the cooler the iPhone. But with a house you don't really care if the battery is the size of a deep freeze as long as it does its job. This is not entirely true in that shipping and installation are a bit of a concern but once there most people won't care.
;thus house batteries not only benefit from the car battery research but can use low power density discoveries that cars might not readily use.
What an ideal house battery will have is long term durability (20+ years), very low maintenance, and very low cost per Kwh.
These are close to what researchers are looking for with car batteries
But where this all gets interesting is that the economics look very bad for the power companies if only a few percent of customers are able to abandon the grid. Typically those who can abandon the grid will be private homes owned by slightly wealthier people. These are easy and typically profitable customers to service so losing many of them will see profits vanish while not seeing infrastructure costs drop significantly (you still have to run power past their houses).
But the power companies are facing all kinds of much more subtle problems. For instance people generally hate the power company, thus they will typically enjoy screwing them over if the costs are roughly equal. Also people like going green which means that they are willing to endure minor hardships to go off grid (appeals to boomers). Lastly as boomers are heading into retirement one of the most important things is to nail down a budget. Energy costs can be unpredictable and so installing a fully off grid system could result in a near perfect guaranteed energy cost.
Going forward people are also going to have more and more electric cars. A full solar system with large batteries will potentially mean little or no energy costs when running a car. This again will appeal to people on a fixed budget as they can then watch gas prices go up and down and simply not care.
But the economics are very interesting. If the power company loses 5% of their customers that will almost translate to a 5% drop in revenue with only a tiny drop in costs. This could then start a vicious cycle where they try to make up for it with higher rates which drives away customers and so on. This could spiral until the only people still on the grid are those who can't go solar because of too high a demand for too little surface area (tall buildings) or simply don't have the capital wealth to finance the upgrade (poor people).
Some people have commented that some factories can't go off grid but this is a fallacy in that other than the heaviest of heavy industry most factories could easily meet their energy needs with a solar system combined with some local generation. The key to the local generation making sense is if the above vicious circle were to drive up electrical prices local generation would make sense for a growing number of situations.
There is a great historical precedent for this. Horses in large cities. Basically if in 1880 you drove your buggy into any large city you weren't alone and there were plenty of services available. But once the car began to take over and the richer made the switch it not only ate into the customer base a bit but it caused many horse service companies to no longer be able to justify the lower profit use of such prime downtown real-estate. So as more and more horse servicing companies closed it became more difficult to have a horse in a big city. Then the city officials realized that horses sort of sucked (cleaning horse poop and dead horses from the streets isn't cheap) so they began to push them out. Horses continued in the countryside for decades longer but in the cities the horses were mostly gone very very quickly. So one cannot simply compare the costs of a horse to a car and make a prediction. It becomes the whole situation from psychology to short ter
Just randomly connecting to the grid and backfeeding power causes real problems (i.e. your generator electronics get fried, you can electrocute the guy trying to fix a power outage, etc.). You need special equipment to make sure there are no phase mismatches, it needs to detach itself from the grid if the grid-side drops in a power outage, and you need a new meter.
"MN wants 7% wind? well, uh, push it back to 2020 when we have more transmissions lines." "X percent solar? we have enough online already."
same thing the telcos are seeing and saying, the 60 year old plant out in the hustings isn't a cash cow any more, and relevance is quite expensive to maintain as technology changes. same thing you'd see from the hospitals if the Google Pill diagnosed and treated, all in one, for $12.95 plus a monthly subscription of $9.95.
so connect that meter to the oven and dryer. put up solar panels (you will need a permit to install and a permit to tie into the safety-isolation panel.) and let the utility's big cigars figure out how to maintain and prosper. it is not the function of a disruptive technology to salve the wounds of the old-timers. perhaps the Edison Electric Institute might consider assembling packages of solar/wind/grid systems for their member companies to sell (or lease) and stay in the game.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
It doesn't matter if you generate your own power or not. Most municipalities will not allow you to disconnect from the grid. In most cities, all buildings *must* be connected to the grid and get charged a monthly connection fee, plus whatever the utility claims you've drawn from it.
If you generate your own power and feed into the grid, you're still paying the utility so I doubt they are too concerned about this yet...
Progress is upon us and the social upheaval may stop it all. Just as workers are becomming obsolete in large numbers so will major businesses. Businesses lack a basic sense of co-operation and instead believe in ugly forms of competition. For example GM or Chrysler could have gone to Tesla and taken a lisence to build a set number of vehicles using Tesla's electrical and mechanical designs while offering a differnet body style or accessories. But instead they try every trick in the world to bury Tesla in the dirt. Now watch the electric utilities try to use influence to stop self generation of power for homes. The oil industry is in a panic and I suspect that the tumble in gasoline prices is a futile effort to try to hold onto the market. As 3D printing becomes more advanced factories all over the world will close. Methods of supporting the public must be a prime concern as we are going to see violent social unrest as people feel more and more economic pressure.
I can see one side of mandating these connections. Say you're building a house and decide its going to be off-grid solar and water in North Carolina. Like 99% of the population, you don't buy the house outright and have a mortgage on it. You lose your job, you default and the house goes into foreclosure. The connection of these utilities is important to a lot of people who might buy your home since it's seen as a necessary amenity by many, so the bank or the homebuyer is now on the hook for those setups, even though you didn't own the home outright. To these people, buying a car without these connections is like buying a car without tires on it.
Even $180/kwh sounds incredibly expensive and that's a wholesale price. I can buy lead-acid batteries for under $100 retail at the local auto parts store. Yeah they weigh more and are bigger, but this isn't a portable application we're talking about.
The power coming from a generator is both expensive and dirty. Take a look at the waveform coming from the power companies. Nice smooth 60Hz on an oscilliscope. The power coming from a home generator looks like a heavy metal track in Audacity.
When we lose power, I throw a switch and use a generator, but I unplug all electronics first. Now if my Nissan Leaf could send clean power back to the house in an outage, I would use it. If I lived further South, I would be OK with using solar panels, an inverter, and a few extra batteries.
Ice Bears store energy as ice reserves for later air conditioning use when the sun goes down. This sounds like it would fit best in a sunny but humid climate where nighttime cooling needs are greatest.
http://www.ice-energy.com/
The vast majority of solar panels will be installed on houses connected to a power grid. When a solar system is connected to a grid, the grid is functionally equivalent to a battery.
The economics of batteries to electricity end-users don't seem like they'll scale. And that's setting aside the environmental impact of deploying millions of batteries that would need periodic replacement.
Mark Chediak, the author of the article, seems to have never written an article with any other viewpoint than the one expressed here.
All in all, more noise than signal.
What I want to know is where can I find a cheap generator to strap on to my kids bikes?
If I plug the TV and Xbox through this I could reduce my bills and help solve the child obesity crisis!
Electric companies frightened!
Yeah. No. Wait, what?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I am continually amazed at the press Amory Lovins gets. He calls himself a physicist, but has no degree. He "studied" physics at Oxford. He's the big cheese at the Rocky Mount institute because he founded it. Let's stop quoting self-promoters and stick to the facts!
Take the capacity of the battery times the cycle life - you now have the total WH the battery will deliver.
C = capacity
L = cycle life of battery.
T = total WH deliverable from battery
T= C*L
P = cost of battery
Now take the cost of the battery and divide it by the total WH
P/T = a number that makes buying power from a utility look like a very good deal.
You now have a cost - that assumes the power to charge the battery is free (which it isn't) that tells you this is a bunch of BS.
Batteries are good for emergency back up etc - not for storing large amounts of power. It would make more sense to pump water up hill for later use.
Local line build cost is proportional to peak demand. If you have local storage, then peak demand is very significantly reduced. In some places billing is peak demand based - e.g. peak demand over a 15m or 30m period is used to set the charging regime at a flat rate regardless of consumption.
As a species, we can't be scared to innovate and progress just because it might destroy and industry.
IANAL, but how does this not come under anti-trust? 1. They have a monopoly. 2. It harmed the consumer.
Microsoft got raked over the coals by government and the Slashdot court of public opinion for doing far less.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Apart for maintaining thousand of miles of cables no matter remote or even no matter the weather, and making sure they have overgeneration for when people with solar suddenly have a longer period of "cloud" or bad weather. See nothing at all.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Reliable power for New Detroit....along with your own private security robot.
Where I live, nuclear is really the only option.
* 250 days of cloudy conditions annually
* average windspeed is just 3 mph
OTOH, my monthly power bill is under $70/month except in July and August when it might be double that. I've looked at solar and wind for me and for my neighborhood. 30 yrs to payback, but the normal lifespan for both is just 20-25 yrs.
Not an option, with current levels of efficiency. I would prefer solar at N 34 1' latitude.
Perhaps fuel cells powered by natural gas would be the best off-the-grid power option for us?
I've seen a few mentions of the possibility of this tech's application to home power. What I haven't seen is any real documentation of initial efforts to show the appropriateness of these batteries for home use. Surely the fire hazard will have to be assessed by insurers. It's hard to ignite lead/acid so the insurers will definitely have to be satisfied that this tech is safe in the home.
Things change. In the early 1900's when the DJIA was a dream, there was a buggy whip manufacturer in the mix. They are long gone. -- Polaroid was a 'super company' in the '60s, now the name barely lives on. Even Kodak is not the company it once was because it didn't change with the times... and they even came up with digital photography first! ... I still like mainframes, but that isn't the way of the world anymore. ... Times change. Business models must too.
... "When you pry the source from my cold dead hands."
This is just sensationalist chickbait bullsiht. The electric companies are in no danger at all.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Why not?
All new superior technologies are disruptive to older less efficient ones. It's called progress. Now that storage and panel prices are coming down it's a superior technology for sunny climates. The grid will always exist as a need to distribute power for those locations that cannot completely produce their own. It's just going to look a lot less centralized, and much less vulnerable. I think it's a good thing. The market will not be ignored.
Nope. I doubt this worries any power utility or industry.
The biggest obstacle to home rooftop solar power is the capitol costs VS electrical prices.
1) Capitol costs are high, and electrical prices are low, so to break even on a large investment is like 20 years, which is too long.
2) Capitol costs are in solar panels and installation, very few have battery systems, most either do nothing or sell back to grid (hence part of the issue with electrical prices)
3) Batteries would help in remote location installs, but in that case the effect on electrical providers would be nil as they won't be providing service anyway.
About the only situation where this might come into play would be if electrical prices go up, and consumers lack the ability (for whatever reason, hostile regulation for example) to sell back to the grid. In such a case then it might make battery storage feasible. However again it would depend on the cost of the batteries, how long they last, and a host of other factors.
Anyway in the near term, this has little significance on anything really.
I just think it's sad electricity companies feel like it's more cost effective for them to politically blunt the impact of solar, rather than being the undeniable crusaders in the field.
BTW, this fact alone makes patriotism towards America a joke. #democracyfail #stillexperimenting
Sadly, lgw still hasn't objected to Jane's Slayer misinformation even though I gave lgw a generous two days to show that he's a true skeptic. So let's review the basic physics in this thought experiment. A source is heated by constant electrical power inside a vacuum chamber with cooler walls.
Here's how to use the principle of conservation of energy. Draw a boundary around the heat source:
power in = electrical heating power + radiative power in from the chamber walls
power out = radiative power out from the heat source
Since power in = power out through any boundary where nothing inside is changing:
electrical heating power + radiative power in from the chamber walls = radiative power out from the heat source
For a simple example, blackbody cold walls are at 0F (T_c = 255K) and the heated blackbody source is at 150F (T_h = 339K). Using irradiance (power/m^2) simplifies the equation:
electricity + sigma*T_c^4 = sigma*T_h^4 (Eq. 1)
See? Applying conservation of energy isn't that complicated. In contrast, Jane's incorrect Sky Dragon Slayer equation violates conservation of energy:
Jane got the very first equation wrong, because Jane refuses to write down an energy conservation equation for a boundary around the source without wrongly "cancelling" terms.
Once again, mainstream physics is based on conservation of energy. That means power in = power out through any boundary where nothing inside is changing.
Once again, I'm trying to point out that you and the other Slayers misunderstood your textbooks. Electrical heating power depends on the cooler chamber wall temperature. "Radiant power output" doesn't. Sky Dragon Slayers have confused two completely different fundamental concepts.
I'm not the only one insisting that power in = power out through any boundary where nothing inside is changing. Once again, that's a fundamental principle called "conservation of energy". Here are some introductions: example (backup), example (backup), example (backup).
As you can tell, conservation of energy is a fundamental physics principle. Assumptions of "perfect conversion and no entropic losses" aren't applicable, and anyone who mistakenly thinks they are should read through those examples to learn about conservation of energy.
Jane seems to be saying that at steady-state:
net electrical power consumed = net radiative power out
But net radiative power out of a boundary around the source = "radiative power out" minus "radiative power in", so the equation Jane just described also says:
net electrical power consumed = "radiative power out" minus "radiative power in"
However, this new equation doesn't match Jane's earlier equation:
Notice that Jane's earlier equation doesn't describe net radiative power out, which is why it violates conservation of energy. Is Jane retracting his earlier incorrect equation, or does Jane dispute the definition of the word "net"?
As I suspected, Jane disputes the definition of the word "net". Jane didn't get his nonsensical definition from any of his textbooks, because in physics, net power through a boundary around the source = "radiative power out" minus "radiative power in".
That's what net means. But after it became clear that Jane is hopelessly confused about the very term "NET" which he keeps capitalizing, I explained conservation of energy in a way that didn't require using that troublesome word. Draw a boundary around the heat source:
power in = electrical heating power + radiative power in from the chamber walls
power out = radiative power out from the heat source
Since power in = power out through any boundary where nothing inside is changing:
electrical heating power + radiative power in from the chamber walls = radiative power out from the heat source
Notice that this equation is equivalent to the equation Jane just described, but only if Jane uses the physics definition of the word "net". And in order to derive it, I didn't even have to use that word which has Jane hopelessly confused. All I had to use was conservation of energy.
Continued here, here, and here.