There are some interesting concepts out there (Germany) where grid-tie solar inverters can be designed to help stabilize the grid - these large utilities could be adopting such technologies for everyone's benefit. Instead they want to just ignore technical solutions and add a fee. So, I think they really mean "threat to their core business" not "threat to grid stability".
Sadly I'd have to agree with you...
For some reason, many large businesses would rather hold on to dear life to their old business models rather than embrace a new idea.
Tesla's product could be a real game changer, especially with the big utilities beginning to bully customers with the help of the Koch brothers. However, I to be realistic most of us would need multiple power walls per home here in the desert because summer daily power usage can go up 5x or more due to air conditioning load.
Yes, that thought occurred to me as well.
Question, are those HVAC units updated to efficient models? I was rather impressed at how much power my new HVAC saved over my old one.
My compressor went out and I considered having it repaired, but it was about 1/3 the cost of replacing it and it was a 10 year old 13 SEER unit. My new unit is a 16 SEER two stage, two speed unit and my power bill went down an average of $100 a month. It will pay for itself in about 7 years, making it largely free in my mind. (the finance cost is a bit more than the monthly savings, but it has a 10 year parts and labor warranty and should last longer since it isn't a builder's grade unit).
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I just wish I could install solar that would pay for itself in 7 years. If I could, I'd do it tomorrow.:(
HECO has been screwing their customers for years with the highest electricity prices in the nation. Now they found a less expensive option (PV) and they're flocking to it in droves.
The "Free Market" isn't so great when it fucks you, is it?
HECO is nothing like a "free market", since I can't go install a competing power company, now can I?
Pitting a Tesla P85D against a Dodge Charge Hellcat...
I have to admit, the Tesla looked like fun. It isn't a sports car, but it wasn't meant to be one, but it sure seemed to have some fun driving experiences...
I think one of my objections to EVs is that they are all cars or little mini CUVs.
If Tesla could make a Suburban an EV that was fun to drive and cost about what current Suburban's cost, I might consider one.
I wouldn't have said that a year ago. So EVs are warming up to me... except for their cost...
The P85D in that video is $132K! That is nuts. As he says in the video, if you own both cars for 20 YEARS, you're still $1,000 ahead in total cost driving to the Dodge and buying gas as compared to the Tesla. (Maintenance might be closer than you think, the Dodge's engine should still be good in 20 years, the Tesla will need a new battery pack for $35k in that time)
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So Elon, get on it, make me a full size EV SUV for $75K with a 250 mile range!:)
So, if you're lucky, you will just break even with the purchase price of the battery a year or so after the warranty runs out (if it doesn't die before then). And that is ignoring the time value of money and whatnot (simply leaving your money in a savings account would be a better use of your money because you'd at least get some interest). So no, this isn't going to save you anything.
That might all be true, except for 2 things:
1. If Elon can get enough early adopters to buy in, he might get his costs down. If this were $2K instead of $3,500, those numbers change quite a bit.
2. If the night power is provided by hydro or wind and the day peak power is provided by natural gas generators, then by time-shifting your power, you're producing less CO2. This matters more to some people, less to others, but it is a point to consider.
Well said, also no one seems to be calculating in the environmental costs of conventional power, or the benefits to society as a whole when those environmental costs are reduced *IF* more and more of us switch over to such systems.
Yea, I have to say, if we had a carbon tax, a lot of this suddenly would make sense...
I'm against a carbon tax for more than one reason, but I understand the thought process behind it...
IMHO, this is totally the wrong way to look at this technology. Personally I don't care if it's more expensive than conventional power, if I could install a small wind turbine and a few solars on my property and charge this battery, it's off the grid for my acre. Totally worth it. People need to stop thinking in terms of 'its more expensive than conventional power.' That is the wrong way to look at this, IMHO.
I have to say that I agree here...
If I owned a property out in the county, if grid power wasn't 100% reliable (it is where I live), if I just needed limited power at a second home, this might make a perfect off-grid system connected to solar and wind power...
If enough people do just that, then millions of these can be made. Anything produced by the millions becomes cheaper (more or less).
As the price comes down, this then starts to make sense for more in-city use cases.
I've long said that batteries and solar were too expensive, this is the first home battery system where I'm reconsidering that view point.
Now get solar cheaper and you'll have a convert.:D
I am going to assume all your numbers are correct, I didn't do the math.
Lets say that is true. Then what that also says is that it is darn close to break even, if not slightly profitable now by 3% over 10 years.
That isn't exciting, but it is a big change over a year or two ago's cost.
The other thing is what happens to the numbers if the price of this goes down by 20% and the price of power during the day goes up by 20%?
Run the numbers again and I suspect they'll be a smashing success.
Volume does wonders for any manufactured product, if they can produce millions of these, they might cut the cost by enough to make... millions of them worthwhile.:)
Elon Musk has the money and the will to bet on that, he can build a million of them on spec, counting on selling them if he drives the price down far enough
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I've been a vocal critic of batteries and solar on this forum for many years now, but I've also said that my primary issue was price.
Get the price down and much of my criticisms go away.
But isn't it strange how on Slashdot, something as benign and wonderful as a backup power syste, that isn't Gasoline, diesel, or natgas powered is so widely condemned?
It's like the site has been taken over by those old guys that spend all day down at the legion drinking beer, then go home to chase thos damn kids off their lawn. They don't know much except that whatever it is, they don't like it.
Not at all, you misunderstand completely...
I'm one of those "old guys"...
The last price reported for this system that was being tested was $13,000. At THAT price it is stupid and dumb.
At $3,500 I feel completely differently about it. I've long said that price is the primary problem with batteries, renewable, etc.
This still doesn't make sense to to me personally, today, because I don't pay a "time of use" charge for my power. I pay less than 11 cents per kWh, day or night.
However, if I paid twice that during the day, this would just about make sense, even without solar power.
If it costs $1,000 to have it installed, then just using it to charge at night and use during the day, it would have about a 10 year payback, which is the same as the warranty.
And this is the first commercial version, it may well be half the price in 5 years. If so, then it becomes a no-brainer for anyone paying time of use charges, or anyone with a solar power system who doesn't get net-metering.
The ac part really gets me. I grew up in a part of Australis where 40+ degree days (Celsius) in summer were pretty regular. And yet somehow we survived without any ac at all, just fans on really hot days.
What was the humidity on those days? I suspect it was rather dry air.
We don't actually get that many 40+ C degree days in Texas, but when you combine it with humidity, it is crushing.
All it takes is decent insulation, a basic understanding of heat transfer (aka understanding why throwing open the windows and curtains when it's 45 outside and 30 inside "for the breeze" is a spectacularly stupid idea, but opening up all the windows later that night when the temp drops to the mid 20s is must) and not being a total wimp.
Ahh, it must be a dry heat... At night, the temp DOESN'T drop to the mid 20s, in fact, in the summer, it often stays around 35C all night long.
So yeah, when is hear people talking about their desperate "need" for a/c it irritates me.
You grew up in another way of life... I've read 100 year old newspapers from the Dallas area (back when it was a horse town), and no one did anything during the day. Work had to be done from sunrise to about 10am, then stopped until mid-afternoon, it was simply too hot and humid to function...
So no, they didn't do anything in that heat 100 years ago either, because of the humidity. Now we have AC to fix that, at least for indoors. Outside is still crushing, we go outside to play for half an hour and everyone is done. Even the pool gets too warm in August to really enjoy, it is like taking a hot bath.
This battery could power a smaller sized home for a whole day. Kind of thing that can make solar energy viable.
I have been highly critical of the idea of home battery systems and solar power.
At the prices that this would have cost a year ago, I was right.
At $3,500 for a 10 kWh battery? I'm reconsidering that position. Critically this price is not subsided, which means it works everywhere, not just in CA or some place that rebates are in effect.
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Forget solar power for a minute... If you live in an area that prices power differently during the day than at night... You could recharge this at night and run off it during the day.
If you pay 12 cents per kWh at night and 24 cents per kWh during the day, even with no solar power at all, if you use the whole 10 kWh battery each day, you'd save $438 per year in power bills.
Assuming it costs $1,000 to install, that would pay for itself in 10 years. That by itself isn't very exciting, but it also isn't crazy either. All that has to happen is for the price to go down when the new battery plant goes online, or for power prices to rise. It also has the benefit of balancing the load on the power grid a bit, reducing peak draw during the day and using the excess power at night.
What you just described doesn't fit the mold of the vast majority of internet users. If I had to pull a number out of my ass, the number of home users that have multiple TB of data that needs to be backed up in multiple cloud locations as well as cold storage and home backups, would put you in the top.01%. You just described a business scenario that should be kept to a business class connection, not a $50 or $100/month home connection.
I think the OP's post is reasonable. The other 99.99% of internet users out there would benefit far more from a stable 10x10 connection than they do from multi-Gb download speeds.
I'm not bashing you, it sounds like you've got a great setup that works for you. Just pointing out that your use case doesn't apply to very many people.
Actually... you're right, I would have to agree with you...
It is easy to allow one's own person use case to color their views of things... My Mother has 3 megabit ADSL and any time I go to her house, it is painful to me, but to her, it is "normal". She has never had anything faster.
How about we aim for 25/25 then for everyone? 10/10 is too slow for a long term plan, IMHO.:)
Or better yet, how about we plan for and build out gigabit to everyone!:) AT&T just laid fiber in my neighborhood and is going to soon offer gigabit speeds (up and down!) for $120 per month, but with a 1 TB data cap (that is not nearly enough for that speed IMHO).
10/10 and even 25/25 sounds great today, and for a lot of people it would be nice, but if you're going to do a national roll out, think big and plan for the future. 100 years ago (give or take) we laid copper phone lines across the whole country. Why don't we now replace all that with fiber across the whole country and replace the whole phone system with fiber to every home.
US per capita emissions of Carbon in 2010 were 17.56 metric tons.
China was 6.19 metric tons and India was 1.67.
My concern is that if India and China were to rise even a small amount, it would wipe out anything the US could do.
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To be blunt, I'm willing to accept some changes, if all of humanity is willing to do it. I think some of the resistance you see and hear about comes from the fact that some Americans believe that we'd do all the suffering while others would continue polluting.
It is the belief that "if China and India don't do it as well, then we might as well not bother".
This is what was so broken about the original Kyoto Protocol, it was unfairly harsh towards nations such as the US. Even China doesn't really like it, and I quote:
"Negotiations were held in Lima in 2014 to agree on a post-Kyoto legal framework that would obligate all major polluters to pay for CO2 emissions. China, India, and the United States have all signaled that they will not ratify any treaty that will commit them legally to reduce CO2 emissions."
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Going back to the first point.... consider that the US current emits about 3 times as much CO2 per person as China. If the US reduced this by 50% and China increased to match the per-person output, the total would be far higher than it is today due to the number of people they have.
So the question becomes... to reduce worldwide emissions to 50% of current levels, the US would have to reduce to about 9 metric tons per person and China would have to reduce to 3 metric tons per person.
Could the US do that? Probably, but it would be a big change, we haven't been that low since probably before WWII.
Could China reduce to 3 metric tons per person? That is likely to be quite hard, and they may simply not be willing to accept the standard of living that provides.
Now you might ask, "why should China have to live with 3 when the US gets 9?" The simple answer is, "we got here first and we aren't giving it up".
Which is why I have said over and over, we might be better off adapting to the future that is coming rather than fighting it, because if you really think Americans are going to 3 metric tons per person, you're nuts.
Trying to force the whole world to that level would likely start WWIII. You might think that sounds silly, but I don't think it is. Wars have been fought over much less, protecting your way of life is as solid a reason as any to engage in violence.
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So the question becomes, what global level is acceptable and what level for each nation is acceptable?
Getting the US to cut is one thing, getting the whole planet to cut is quite another, and I just don't think getting all of Earth to cut 50% is going to happen.
Perhaps not, lots of conversations going on, and then this silly thing called the real world:)
A 200km range battery would probably work, it isn't ideal, but it probably is enough for a second car for most people.
Of course, the trick is the $1,000 price. You used a bicycle battery, which is fine, but that isn't what this conversation is about (or at least I don't think it is).
Get me a CAR battery that does that and then I'll be impressed.
TWC neglects our area nearly as badly as Verizon; we didn't have DOCSIS 3 until 18 months ago and if you were unlucky enough to live on a congested node you'd see peak hour speeds dip below 1Mbps. This is a city of 50k with metro area of 250k, we're not talking about cow country. Head out into the sticks and you've got nothing but satellite or (maybe) LTE, neither of which makes for an acceptable wireline replacement.
Bleh, I feel for you... totally...
The state of Internet in the US is embarrassing... where there is a monopoly, the prices are stupid and the speeds are slow.
I'd rather see society make a concerted effort to get everybody a 10/10 connection than roll out gigabit speeds to a handful of lucky cities. We've got whole swathes of the country that are lucky to see T1 speeds on the download side and a pittance on upload. Of course, 25/25 would be better, 50/50 awesome, and 100/100 future proof.
While I agree with you to a point, I wouldn't say 10/10. That is no longer fast enough for a lot of what people could be doing. Video is no longer a minor part of the web.
25/25 would be enough to give multiple streams of 1080p video, which would allow the cable companies to go away.:)
I used to have DirecTV, got rid of them a year ago or so, now everything for us is streaming. I'd be happy to pay some reasonable number per month to buy channels over the web à la carte.
Pretty cool, but still not a fundamental change in the way you use the internet.
Actually, for me personally, it was...
With TWC and 50/5, I made a point to download anything I might think I wanted, because in the evenings, I never actually could get 50 down because it was shared with about 150 houses (actually I'm sure it was faster than that, but a 500 down connection shared with 150 homes is crappy at 7pm).
Now that I get a solid 18 megabytes per second, 24 hours a day, it has changed that behavior. Steam is a good example, I used to have the whole collection downloaded. Then it grew and I needed more space to keep it, and it was running slower keeping everything up to date.
Even a 10GB game would only take about 10 min to download. Now granted, I'd prefer faster, but what it means is that if I really want to play something, 10 min is enough time to go make coffee, use the bathroom, etc.
The "cloud" has become much more useful as such. With "more or less" unlimited space in my OneDrive, it has become practical to upload a copy of everything there. I would never have tried that before with just 5 up. I also run two online backup services, BackBlaze and Crashplan, to make sure I haev copies of everything. In addition, about 2 TB of critical files (mostly work related) are stored on Amazon Glacier. Again something I wouldn't try with 5 up, but with 150 up, becomes no big deal.
And yes, in addition to 4 copies in the cloud, I also have multiple external hard drives that I rotate on backups. I lost data once, nearly 20 years ago... NEVER AGAIN!:) (and yes, I test restores from time to time)
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Just my personal experience, others will be different of course.
Meanwhile I'm lucky to get 1.2mbps off my DSL and my new place doesn't have cable or dsl access. I might be able to get 802.11n wifi, but with all likelihood I'm going to be stuck with the gawdaweful lag of a satellite.:(
My wife has been shopping for a new home in the county, she recently found a nice 10 acre place with a starter house on it not too far outside of Dallas for under 300k that would let us move there and then build a proper home when we're ready.
It is about 5 miles past decent internet.:)
My deal with her is that if I can't get at least 50/50 internet, I'm not going, otherwise she can have almost anything she wants.
I'm not going back to 50/5, that is just evil. I have 150/150 now, but frankly don't really need that much, 50/50 would be enough. It is the lack of upload on most home connections that would kill me.
I currently have the luxury of mooching off a business class symmetrical connection (30/30) which has completely spoiled me. It's dedicated speed and has more upload than any consumer grade connection I can obtain. When I have to go back to a residential line I will miss that upload more than anything else. I can't match it where I currently live (TWC, 50/5 is the best here) or where I plan on living (Cox, tops out at 150/20 and is totally out of my price range, the most affordable tier is 50/5).
I hear you... I used to have TWC at 50/5... but thankfully I've had FIOS for several years now...
150 down, 150 up... really a wonderful thing... That 700MB download? About 39 seconds...
And I really do get those speeds... There is enough bandwidth to the neighborhood to support it.
Extreme edge cases, not common edge cases. Examples:
1. Towing excessive weight
Just FYI, the use of the word "excessive" implies a bias.
2. Driving long distances and needing to make extremely infrequent and short refueling stops (like 10 minutes max)
This is true, road trips account for a small fraction of total miles driven.
3. Driving all day in an area where there are no charging options or don't have time to stop and refuel at one.
I know of exactly one charging station in town, it is located at a restaurant. Otherwise there is no place to charge that I know of.
I can count on one finger the number of times in a year something like that might apply to me. For those rare occasions, renting a vehicle is practical.
Fair enough, that choice will make sense for some people.
My primary issue is that I can't rent a vehicle that I'd actually want to drive across the country, they simply are not as nice as the vehicle that I drive on a regular basis.
If you could dependably rent such a thing, it would at least be worth considering. I suspect the cost would make it pointless however, as it stands the cost to rent a base Suburban for a week is more than the monthly cost to own mine. It probably would be 2 months worth of payments for a nice one to rent.
Slashdot Mirror
There are some interesting concepts out there (Germany) where grid-tie solar inverters can be designed to help stabilize the grid - these large utilities could be adopting such technologies for everyone's benefit. Instead they want to just ignore technical solutions and add a fee.
So, I think they really mean "threat to their core business" not "threat to grid stability".
Sadly I'd have to agree with you...
For some reason, many large businesses would rather hold on to dear life to their old business models rather than embrace a new idea.
Tesla's product could be a real game changer, especially with the big utilities beginning to bully customers with the help of the Koch brothers.
However, I to be realistic most of us would need multiple power walls per home here in the desert because summer daily power usage can go up 5x or more due to air conditioning load.
Yes, that thought occurred to me as well.
Question, are those HVAC units updated to efficient models? I was rather impressed at how much power my new HVAC saved over my old one.
My compressor went out and I considered having it repaired, but it was about 1/3 the cost of replacing it and it was a 10 year old 13 SEER unit. My new unit is a 16 SEER two stage, two speed unit and my power bill went down an average of $100 a month. It will pay for itself in about 7 years, making it largely free in my mind. (the finance cost is a bit more than the monthly savings, but it has a 10 year parts and labor warranty and should last longer since it isn't a builder's grade unit).
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I just wish I could install solar that would pay for itself in 7 years. If I could, I'd do it tomorrow. :(
HECO has been screwing their customers for years with the highest electricity prices in the nation. Now they found a less expensive option (PV) and they're flocking to it in droves.
The "Free Market" isn't so great when it fucks you, is it?
HECO is nothing like a "free market", since I can't go install a competing power company, now can I?
And they almost certainly won't remain constant.
When I switched away from my oil heating system, I miscalculated the huge surge in oil prices, so my ROI was insanely short.
Same with having a fuel efficient vehicle - I'm spending about a car payment less a month on gasoline than the folks who just have to have guzzlers.
Prices for established energy sources very seldom go down over the long term.
I am one of those "gas guzzler drivers". I love my big truck...
Last night I watched a Head 2 Head video from MotorTrend
https://youtu.be/RWQ-dnpplaA
Pitting a Tesla P85D against a Dodge Charge Hellcat...
I have to admit, the Tesla looked like fun. It isn't a sports car, but it wasn't meant to be one, but it sure seemed to have some fun driving experiences...
I think one of my objections to EVs is that they are all cars or little mini CUVs.
If Tesla could make a Suburban an EV that was fun to drive and cost about what current Suburban's cost, I might consider one.
I wouldn't have said that a year ago. So EVs are warming up to me... except for their cost...
The P85D in that video is $132K! That is nuts. As he says in the video, if you own both cars for 20 YEARS, you're still $1,000 ahead in total cost driving to the Dodge and buying gas as compared to the Tesla. (Maintenance might be closer than you think, the Dodge's engine should still be good in 20 years, the Tesla will need a new battery pack for $35k in that time)
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So Elon, get on it, make me a full size EV SUV for $75K with a 250 mile range! :)
So, if you're lucky, you will just break even with the purchase price of the battery a year or so after the warranty runs out (if it doesn't die before then). And that is ignoring the time value of money and whatnot (simply leaving your money in a savings account would be a better use of your money because you'd at least get some interest). So no, this isn't going to save you anything.
That might all be true, except for 2 things:
1. If Elon can get enough early adopters to buy in, he might get his costs down. If this were $2K instead of $3,500, those numbers change quite a bit.
2. If the night power is provided by hydro or wind and the day peak power is provided by natural gas generators, then by time-shifting your power, you're producing less CO2. This matters more to some people, less to others, but it is a point to consider.
Well said, also no one seems to be calculating in the environmental costs of conventional power, or the benefits to society as a whole when those environmental costs are reduced *IF* more and more of us switch over to such systems.
Yea, I have to say, if we had a carbon tax, a lot of this suddenly would make sense...
I'm against a carbon tax for more than one reason, but I understand the thought process behind it...
IMHO, this is totally the wrong way to look at this technology. Personally I don't care if it's more expensive than conventional power, if I could install a small wind turbine and a few solars on my property and charge this battery, it's off the grid for my acre. Totally worth it. People need to stop thinking in terms of 'its more expensive than conventional power.' That is the wrong way to look at this, IMHO.
I have to say that I agree here...
If I owned a property out in the county, if grid power wasn't 100% reliable (it is where I live), if I just needed limited power at a second home, this might make a perfect off-grid system connected to solar and wind power...
If enough people do just that, then millions of these can be made. Anything produced by the millions becomes cheaper (more or less).
As the price comes down, this then starts to make sense for more in-city use cases.
I've long said that batteries and solar were too expensive, this is the first home battery system where I'm reconsidering that view point.
Now get solar cheaper and you'll have a convert. :D
I am going to assume all your numbers are correct, I didn't do the math.
Lets say that is true. Then what that also says is that it is darn close to break even, if not slightly profitable now by 3% over 10 years.
That isn't exciting, but it is a big change over a year or two ago's cost.
The other thing is what happens to the numbers if the price of this goes down by 20% and the price of power during the day goes up by 20%?
Run the numbers again and I suspect they'll be a smashing success.
Volume does wonders for any manufactured product, if they can produce millions of these, they might cut the cost by enough to make... millions of them worthwhile. :)
Elon Musk has the money and the will to bet on that, he can build a million of them on spec, counting on selling them if he drives the price down far enough
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I've been a vocal critic of batteries and solar on this forum for many years now, but I've also said that my primary issue was price.
Get the price down and much of my criticisms go away.
Because that is what it is called...
https://www.google.com/search?...
"synonyms: parallel"
Nationally about 7% of power is lost due to transmission losses of all kinds.
It costs more than 7% more money to have distributed generation than it does to do it centrally.
Right now in the US, it costs about $4 a watt to install solar on a house. Utilities can do it at scale centrally for about $2 per watt.
That is half the price, far less than transmission losses could make up for.
Absolutely this is great news for people.
But isn't it strange how on Slashdot, something as benign and wonderful as a backup power syste, that isn't Gasoline, diesel, or natgas powered is so widely condemned?
It's like the site has been taken over by those old guys that spend all day down at the legion drinking beer, then go home to chase thos damn kids off their lawn. They don't know much except that whatever it is, they don't like it.
Not at all, you misunderstand completely...
I'm one of those "old guys"...
The last price reported for this system that was being tested was $13,000. At THAT price it is stupid and dumb.
At $3,500 I feel completely differently about it. I've long said that price is the primary problem with batteries, renewable, etc.
This still doesn't make sense to to me personally, today, because I don't pay a "time of use" charge for my power. I pay less than 11 cents per kWh, day or night.
However, if I paid twice that during the day, this would just about make sense, even without solar power.
If it costs $1,000 to have it installed, then just using it to charge at night and use during the day, it would have about a 10 year payback, which is the same as the warranty.
And this is the first commercial version, it may well be half the price in 5 years. If so, then it becomes a no-brainer for anyone paying time of use charges, or anyone with a solar power system who doesn't get net-metering.
I live in Texas and I don't know anyone with a heat pump...
I do know lots of people who heat with natural gas however...
Now that I think about it... I don't think I've ever lived in a home without natural gas, but I could be mistaken... maybe that is just Texas?
The fact still remains that AC is a luxury. People have lived in Washington DC long before they had AC there.
And people used to club their women and drag them back to their caves as well, what's your point?
That it was done in the past is not a good reason.
The ac part really gets me. I grew up in a part of Australis where 40+ degree days (Celsius) in summer were pretty regular. And yet somehow we survived without any ac at all, just fans on really hot days.
What was the humidity on those days? I suspect it was rather dry air.
We don't actually get that many 40+ C degree days in Texas, but when you combine it with humidity, it is crushing.
All it takes is decent insulation, a basic understanding of heat transfer (aka understanding why throwing open the windows and curtains when it's 45 outside and 30 inside "for the breeze" is a spectacularly stupid idea, but opening up all the windows later that night when the temp drops to the mid 20s is must) and not being a total wimp.
Ahh, it must be a dry heat... At night, the temp DOESN'T drop to the mid 20s, in fact, in the summer, it often stays around 35C all night long.
So yeah, when is hear people talking about their desperate "need" for a/c it irritates me.
You grew up in another way of life... I've read 100 year old newspapers from the Dallas area (back when it was a horse town), and no one did anything during the day. Work had to be done from sunrise to about 10am, then stopped until mid-afternoon, it was simply too hot and humid to function...
So no, they didn't do anything in that heat 100 years ago either, because of the humidity. Now we have AC to fix that, at least for indoors. Outside is still crushing, we go outside to play for half an hour and everyone is done. Even the pool gets too warm in August to really enjoy, it is like taking a hot bath.
This battery could power a smaller sized home for a whole day. Kind of thing that can make solar energy viable.
I have been highly critical of the idea of home battery systems and solar power.
At the prices that this would have cost a year ago, I was right.
At $3,500 for a 10 kWh battery? I'm reconsidering that position. Critically this price is not subsided, which means it works everywhere, not just in CA or some place that rebates are in effect.
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Forget solar power for a minute... If you live in an area that prices power differently during the day than at night... You could recharge this at night and run off it during the day.
If you pay 12 cents per kWh at night and 24 cents per kWh during the day, even with no solar power at all, if you use the whole 10 kWh battery each day, you'd save $438 per year in power bills.
Assuming it costs $1,000 to install, that would pay for itself in 10 years. That by itself isn't very exciting, but it also isn't crazy either. All that has to happen is for the price to go down when the new battery plant goes online, or for power prices to rise. It also has the benefit of balancing the load on the power grid a bit, reducing peak draw during the day and using the excess power at night.
What you just described doesn't fit the mold of the vast majority of internet users. If I had to pull a number out of my ass, the number of home users that have multiple TB of data that needs to be backed up in multiple cloud locations as well as cold storage and home backups, would put you in the top .01%. You just described a business scenario that should be kept to a business class connection, not a $50 or $100/month home connection.
I think the OP's post is reasonable. The other 99.99% of internet users out there would benefit far more from a stable 10x10 connection than they do from multi-Gb download speeds.
I'm not bashing you, it sounds like you've got a great setup that works for you. Just pointing out that your use case doesn't apply to very many people.
Actually... you're right, I would have to agree with you...
It is easy to allow one's own person use case to color their views of things... My Mother has 3 megabit ADSL and any time I go to her house, it is painful to me, but to her, it is "normal". She has never had anything faster.
How about we aim for 25/25 then for everyone? 10/10 is too slow for a long term plan, IMHO. :)
Or better yet, how about we plan for and build out gigabit to everyone! :) AT&T just laid fiber in my neighborhood and is going to soon offer gigabit speeds (up and down!) for $120 per month, but with a 1 TB data cap (that is not nearly enough for that speed IMHO).
10/10 and even 25/25 sounds great today, and for a lot of people it would be nice, but if you're going to do a national roll out, think big and plan for the future. 100 years ago (give or take) we laid copper phone lines across the whole country. Why don't we now replace all that with fiber across the whole country and replace the whole phone system with fiber to every home.
https://www.google.com/webhp?s...
I found that to be interesting...
US per capita emissions of Carbon in 2010 were 17.56 metric tons.
China was 6.19 metric tons and India was 1.67.
My concern is that if India and China were to rise even a small amount, it would wipe out anything the US could do.
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To be blunt, I'm willing to accept some changes, if all of humanity is willing to do it. I think some of the resistance you see and hear about comes from the fact that some Americans believe that we'd do all the suffering while others would continue polluting.
It is the belief that "if China and India don't do it as well, then we might as well not bother".
This is what was so broken about the original Kyoto Protocol, it was unfairly harsh towards nations such as the US. Even China doesn't really like it, and I quote:
"Negotiations were held in Lima in 2014 to agree on a post-Kyoto legal framework that would obligate all major polluters to pay for CO2 emissions. China, India, and the United States have all signaled that they will not ratify any treaty that will commit them legally to reduce CO2 emissions."
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Going back to the first point.... consider that the US current emits about 3 times as much CO2 per person as China. If the US reduced this by 50% and China increased to match the per-person output, the total would be far higher than it is today due to the number of people they have.
So the question becomes... to reduce worldwide emissions to 50% of current levels, the US would have to reduce to about 9 metric tons per person and China would have to reduce to 3 metric tons per person.
Could the US do that? Probably, but it would be a big change, we haven't been that low since probably before WWII.
Could China reduce to 3 metric tons per person? That is likely to be quite hard, and they may simply not be willing to accept the standard of living that provides.
Now you might ask, "why should China have to live with 3 when the US gets 9?" The simple answer is, "we got here first and we aren't giving it up".
Which is why I have said over and over, we might be better off adapting to the future that is coming rather than fighting it, because if you really think Americans are going to 3 metric tons per person, you're nuts.
Trying to force the whole world to that level would likely start WWIII. You might think that sounds silly, but I don't think it is. Wars have been fought over much less, protecting your way of life is as solid a reason as any to engage in violence.
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So the question becomes, what global level is acceptable and what level for each nation is acceptable?
Getting the US to cut is one thing, getting the whole planet to cut is quite another, and I just don't think getting all of Earth to cut 50% is going to happen.
I guess it depends on your opinion of slow.
10 megabit strikes me as the minimum acceptable in 2015.
My Mom has 3 megabit ADSL, the fastest offered to her home. She is just outside of the service area of TWC, it is her only option.
That is slow. :)
Perhaps not, lots of conversations going on, and then this silly thing called the real world :)
A 200km range battery would probably work, it isn't ideal, but it probably is enough for a second car for most people.
Of course, the trick is the $1,000 price. You used a bicycle battery, which is fine, but that isn't what this conversation is about (or at least I don't think it is).
Get me a CAR battery that does that and then I'll be impressed.
TWC neglects our area nearly as badly as Verizon; we didn't have DOCSIS 3 until 18 months ago and if you were unlucky enough to live on a congested node you'd see peak hour speeds dip below 1Mbps. This is a city of 50k with metro area of 250k, we're not talking about cow country. Head out into the sticks and you've got nothing but satellite or (maybe) LTE, neither of which makes for an acceptable wireline replacement.
Bleh, I feel for you... totally...
The state of Internet in the US is embarrassing... where there is a monopoly, the prices are stupid and the speeds are slow.
I'd rather see society make a concerted effort to get everybody a 10/10 connection than roll out gigabit speeds to a handful of lucky cities. We've got whole swathes of the country that are lucky to see T1 speeds on the download side and a pittance on upload. Of course, 25/25 would be better, 50/50 awesome, and 100/100 future proof.
While I agree with you to a point, I wouldn't say 10/10. That is no longer fast enough for a lot of what people could be doing. Video is no longer a minor part of the web.
25/25 would be enough to give multiple streams of 1080p video, which would allow the cable companies to go away. :)
I used to have DirecTV, got rid of them a year ago or so, now everything for us is streaming. I'd be happy to pay some reasonable number per month to buy channels over the web à la carte.
Pretty cool, but still not a fundamental change in the way you use the internet.
Actually, for me personally, it was...
With TWC and 50/5, I made a point to download anything I might think I wanted, because in the evenings, I never actually could get 50 down because it was shared with about 150 houses (actually I'm sure it was faster than that, but a 500 down connection shared with 150 homes is crappy at 7pm).
Now that I get a solid 18 megabytes per second, 24 hours a day, it has changed that behavior. Steam is a good example, I used to have the whole collection downloaded. Then it grew and I needed more space to keep it, and it was running slower keeping everything up to date.
Even a 10GB game would only take about 10 min to download. Now granted, I'd prefer faster, but what it means is that if I really want to play something, 10 min is enough time to go make coffee, use the bathroom, etc.
The "cloud" has become much more useful as such. With "more or less" unlimited space in my OneDrive, it has become practical to upload a copy of everything there. I would never have tried that before with just 5 up. I also run two online backup services, BackBlaze and Crashplan, to make sure I haev copies of everything. In addition, about 2 TB of critical files (mostly work related) are stored on Amazon Glacier. Again something I wouldn't try with 5 up, but with 150 up, becomes no big deal.
And yes, in addition to 4 copies in the cloud, I also have multiple external hard drives that I rotate on backups. I lost data once, nearly 20 years ago... NEVER AGAIN! :) (and yes, I test restores from time to time)
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Just my personal experience, others will be different of course.
Meanwhile I'm lucky to get 1.2mbps off my DSL and my new place doesn't have cable or dsl access. I might be able to get 802.11n wifi, but with all likelihood I'm going to be stuck with the gawdaweful lag of a satellite. :(
My wife has been shopping for a new home in the county, she recently found a nice 10 acre place with a starter house on it not too far outside of Dallas for under 300k that would let us move there and then build a proper home when we're ready.
It is about 5 miles past decent internet. :)
My deal with her is that if I can't get at least 50/50 internet, I'm not going, otherwise she can have almost anything she wants.
I'm not going back to 50/5, that is just evil. I have 150/150 now, but frankly don't really need that much, 50/50 would be enough. It is the lack of upload on most home connections that would kill me.
I currently have the luxury of mooching off a business class symmetrical connection (30/30) which has completely spoiled me. It's dedicated speed and has more upload than any consumer grade connection I can obtain. When I have to go back to a residential line I will miss that upload more than anything else. I can't match it where I currently live (TWC, 50/5 is the best here) or where I plan on living (Cox, tops out at 150/20 and is totally out of my price range, the most affordable tier is 50/5).
I hear you... I used to have TWC at 50/5... but thankfully I've had FIOS for several years now...
150 down, 150 up... really a wonderful thing... That 700MB download? About 39 seconds...
And I really do get those speeds... There is enough bandwidth to the neighborhood to support it.
Extreme edge cases, not common edge cases. Examples:
1. Towing excessive weight
Just FYI, the use of the word "excessive" implies a bias.
2. Driving long distances and needing to make extremely infrequent and short refueling stops (like 10 minutes max)
This is true, road trips account for a small fraction of total miles driven.
3. Driving all day in an area where there are no charging options or don't have time to stop and refuel at one.
I know of exactly one charging station in town, it is located at a restaurant. Otherwise there is no place to charge that I know of.
I can count on one finger the number of times in a year something like that might apply to me. For those rare occasions, renting a vehicle is practical.
Fair enough, that choice will make sense for some people.
My primary issue is that I can't rent a vehicle that I'd actually want to drive across the country, they simply are not as nice as the vehicle that I drive on a regular basis.
If you could dependably rent such a thing, it would at least be worth considering. I suspect the cost would make it pointless however, as it stands the cost to rent a base Suburban for a week is more than the monthly cost to own mine. It probably would be 2 months worth of payments for a nice one to rent.
So instead of addressing the issue I bought up, you resort to insults?
Fair enough, but that usually means that my point was right and you've got nothing to counter it with...
Reply to the point, not the person...