Of course not... but it sounds like he is trying to balance self-interest with interest in all of society...
Imagine if Exxon tomorrow said, "we're going to invest half our profits into clean energy, because clearly there is no future in burning oil forever and if we don't get off our addiction, then we all suffer for it".
I'm still unclear on WHY they paid so much over retail.
To get one of the first ones off the line.
Ford didn't buy it directly from Tesla, Ford bought it from the first owner who got it via referral promotion, then made a nice sum of profit in flipping it to Ford.
The $55K to Ford is trivial to get a few extra months of lead time in tearing it apart and testing it.
Umm... My respect for Musk just went up a few degrees... yes, he is still self-interested, but I tend to believe him when he says:
Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. By the same token, it means the market is enormous. Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the worldâ(TM)s factories every day.
It is rare that a wealthy person takes that long view...
But there are no technical breakthroughs, of any kind, required. Gravel piles, electrified railroads and regenerative braking are all well understood.
Thanks for your reply and info... and yes, I'd tend to agree, there isn't anything tricky or fancy there it is just figuring out how to do it economically. But I don't doubt it can be done.
Nobody sane thinks we're going to 100% wind/solar. I expect 'on peak' to remain daytime for my life.
Actually, I see a lot of posts on Slashdot from people who think we will. I see 100% wind/solar/hydro to be rather hard to accomplish without spending insane amounts of money and basically building a new grid and power system from almost scratch.
My concern is the CO2 levels. I never used to care, I thought it was a bunch of hogwash. But I've become convinced over the past year or so that this is indeed a problem. I've been watching and reading climate scientists, the real boring ones that work at places like NASA, who are basically saying that if we wish to hold global temps to 2 degrees C over pre-industrial, then we have to cut 80% of our CO2 output by 2050, and even that only gives us a better than 50% chance of hitting that goal.
We really need to become carbon neutral by 2050 to be ok, and I see that as nearly impossible. To be honest, that scares me because I have three kids and I don't like the idea that they will grow up in a very changed world.
---
In short, this is one reason why I've been pushing for nuclear. I'm happy to build all the wind and solar we can, but I think to really replace coal, oil, and natural gas, we'll need nuclear, and we'll need a ton of it.
First, Ford has a dealer network and service network that is far greater than anything Tesla can put together.
Second, Ford might well say, we have done well with EcoBoost, what if we offered EV versions of everything we sell. Musk has said that his goal is to promote EVs, not just sell them. If Ford came to him and said, "Merge with Ford and you'll be the head of the EV division, tasked with making EV versions of every Ford product" he might find that idea attractive.
Finally, while Tesla is growing, they have a huge challenge in front of them. Going from 50,000 cars to 500,000 cars is not nothing, selling and servicing them isn't as simple as you'd think, and many things could yet prevent him from hitting his targets.
A lot of people consider Tesla's success to be a forgone conclusion. That is never a good idea and it isn't true either. All companies run into challenges both big and small, some break through and win, some do not.
Assuming your numbers pencil out, the space doesn't sound like an issue. 30 square miles for 24 hours of power reserves sounds quite doable.
Of course I doubt we'd put them all in one place, but if you did 1 square mile and did 60 of them for more reserves, then that is still totally reasonable.
So space may not be a concern. Then cost becomes an issue. That might not be something that either of us can figure out, but it is a conversation that I'd like to see happen.
I don't know where you went to school, but when I was in school they taught about this fancy amazing thing called "potential energy".
Funny... when I went to school, I learned about math, and money, and economics...
Yes, I'm aware of the concept of pumped storage, but no one wants to talk about the scale or cost required to even out a power grid that is more than 80% wind/solar...
Without a plan to grow to that scale, then they are just fun side projects, nothing more...
In some areas, geothermal is the answer.
Sure, but not in enough areas to matter.
This is exactly the problem. Do you want to solve the CO2 problem or not? If you don't, then fine, solar and geothermal away...
I'm interested in actually figuring out how to cut 80% of our CO2 emissions in the next 35 years, and no one seems to really have an answer to that.
Anything much short of that will not solve the problem.
* He's building a really big battery factory to drive down battery cost.
Yes, and I wish him well... when the batteries are actually cheaper, that'll be wonderful.
However keep in mind something... if he is the only person who can make cheap batteries and everyone else's batteries are expensive, then he has a problem. He can sell the batteries at great profits without bothering to build cars.
Lithium Ion batteries are largely commodities... If you suddenly found a way to get gold from the ground for $50 an ounce, this doesn't mean you suddenly start selling it for half the going rate, why leave all that money on the table. You sell it slowly, over time, and make obscene profits.
* Grid scale salt storage (or similar) is probably a much better way to go, but you have to convince the utilities to do that.
Sure, but the utilities largely answer to public utility commissions, which more or less answer to the public. And the public, at least in most of the US, wants 24/7 reliable CHEAP power.
I suspect a combination of wind/solar power, plus power storage, plus longer distance transmission, is going to be well north of current power prices. You'll run into a LOT of resistance with that.
There is a second factor. The coal, oil, and natural gas aren't going to be left in the ground without some form of compensation for the world, but there isn't really enough money to do that. We may be stuck with the nasty choice of saving the environment, or saving the economy. In the end, the economy is going to win that fight.
$15,900... on what? What exactly was that? Because it sure as hell wasn't a 8kw solar system with a 5 day battery. Unless perhaps you installed it yourself and your state/utility had large incentives.
A 10kw solar system here with no battery is $35,000 to install before incentives, about $23,000 after incentives. The return on investment is over 15 years. Installing a battery would make it infinity, since it will need replacing before it pays for itself.
lastly the $2500 propane generator kicks in
Oh goodie, more money!
Most people waste that much money on stupid crap for their home like Granite countertops or a 20 jet comfort tub in the master bedrooms bath.
:) Well you can call it stupid crap all you want, but those are nice value adds to a house that increase its value.
---
The short version is, without a lot of other people's money, solar and batteries are a long way from making any kind of sense.
Please try to remember that, I told you that now about ten times.
I still can't figure out why you reply to me, when you are so completely clueless.
No one in the world is sending power at any quantity thousands of miles if they can avoid it, you lose too much in transmission.
Of course, you come from Germany, where you have been completely brainwashed into thinking you should pay 30+ cents per KWh, and the irony is that you've been lied to, thinking you're all green...
But you're really not. But go ahead and believe the propaganda, you seem to like it so.
If prices go up, they go up. That is going to happen no matter what.
Nonsense, they don't have to go up any faster than the rate of inflation.
A few places in the world have done a good job of doubling or tripling their power prices, such as Germany.
I doubt in many places you're going to be forced to dry your clothes at 2am. However, you may end up with a pricing model that encourages that. So what? That's why timers were invented.
First, why should I have to change? I get the same power rate any time of day or night. Why in the world do you think it is somehow a "good thing" to be forced to time of day pricing?
Second, timers don't help when my wife wants to do 4 loads of laundry on Saturday.
My father has a tank which contains about 1.5 metric tons of water. Why you have two times 50 gallons is beyond me. And bragging about it?
That is about 360 gallons of water, that is not normal for a house. Not in the US anyway, and I'd be shocked if holding 360 gallons of water was normal anywhere.
50 gallons is the standard size of hot water tank in the US. Other sizes exist, but when you need more hot water, it is cheaper to install two of them than it is to find something larger.
They are in series, so the hot water from tank 1 runs into tank 2, and tank 2 feeds the house.
The parent is wrong anyway, you don't use a smart grid to "switch appliances off", you use it to switch them on. If power prices go negative your heaters would heat your water for free, you would even earn money. And your utility would be grateful.
First, my hot water heaters don't run on the grid, they are run with natural gas.
Second, in order to provide enough hot water for everyone to have a shower in the morning, the water needs to be hot already, it doesn't heat quickly enough to maintain hot water forever for multiple showers (it will do it for one or two).
Finally, my hot water heaters don't talk to the grid, don't know what a "smart grid" is, and frankly I don't WANT anyone else controlling them.
As for the cost to heat the water, it is utterly trivial, so I don't care. I pay less than a dollar a day for hot water, for 5 people. You could get the cost to zero, it still wouldn't be worth replacing them.
Your power tank does not care if it is at 65 degrees plus or at 75. If it can get from 65 to 75 for free on a smart grid, why don't you take it?
The water temp very much does matter... the last thing I want is for the water to be TOO hot, it will scald if set too hot.
My fathers tank is heated by thermal solar.
Good for him, but that doesn't matter to anyone other than people who use that.
So our water heating costs are so low it can not be compared with your 10 cent / kWh of electricity.
As I've said, I don't use electricity to heat my water. Or my house, or dry my clothes, or cook, etc. Natural gas is used for all that.
Your fridge is actually running during daytime like this: *snip* Why do you for funk sakes care what your fridge is doing when no one is at home? Earning or saving money with that?
First, that requires a new fridge, since you can't just apply power to it, then pull it, then apply it, then pull it.
So this plan requires all new appliances, for more or less everyone. Tell me how you'll pay for that.
Second, I have a home office, I was at home yesterday and today, so I do care. Tomorrow and Thursday I'll be at my office.
You fill the washing machine before you go to work. You empty it when you come home.
Come over on Saturday afternoon when it runs all day long.
Even when you are at home "watching the machine": what is the problem if it takes 90 minutes instead of 60 minutes using "free power" from a smart grid when heating the water?
It doesn't take more or less time to run, it has a fixed time to run. Or were you planning to replace that appliance as well?
Smart Grid! == EVIL! I Give up Freedom!
No you are not, Smart Grid == Super Cool! Free Market!
You are the one missing the point. I pay 10 cents per KWh right now, any time of the day or night. I have all the power I want, any time I want. Your solution takes that away from me and will end up costing MORE money, not less.
Oh... I spare me a comment on your idea of freedom (holding the rest of the planet hostage) and free market (putting the rest of the planet into slavery).
Oh spare me, your smart grid has no chance of happening in my lifetime... and it isn't going to do squat to the planet one way or another.
Why do you care about that? That is not your problem but the power companies problem. For Texas I would suggest pumped storage in the Appalachia and for California in the Rockies.
There is largely no grid connection from outside of Texas. Power transmission over that distance is very wasteful, most power is consumed within a few hundred miles of where it is made.
It becomes uneconomic to accept the losses of pumped storage, then transmit it over a thousand miles. You claim it is the power company's problem.
No, it is mine, because I don't want my power bill to triple like it did in Germany. I like my 10 cent per KWh power prices, thank you very much.
Maybe... or maybe Russia would have turned out like Japan. After being completely crushed, it could have been run for a decade under German/British/American supervision and transformed into a democracy.
Look at Germany back to 962 and the start of Otto I's reign in the Holy Roman Empire, move forward and you'll find a land, people, and nation that have done a decent job taking care of themselves for a very long time.
Today Germany has more than 20% of the GDP of the entire EU while having half the unemployment of the EU. If you include the UK and France, that is more than 50% of the GDP of the whole EU.
Frankly, if I was the US President, while I'd still give the UK a lot of attention, I'd focus equal attention on France and Germany, with the goal of having both nations come closer to the US in friendship and alliance.
Putting aside the problems of WWI and WWII (largely the same war, to be honest), Germany, France, and the UK are the triad that make Europe work and are the real wall that keeps Russia at bay.
The new plan is pumped gravel. All that needs is a hill, some train track and two gravel piles. There are lots of losses, but with the right price ratio it's a money maker.
What is the cost of that system? What does that translate into cost per KWh of power when combined with the cost of wind and solar?
How far do you have to transmit that power, at what loss, to get it to all the places that don't have hills? Such as most of Texas and most of Florida?
Let me put this another way...
Do you think that we can keep a cost of 10 cents per KWh while moving to 100% wind/solar and using pumped/lifted storage, and long distance power transmission all while having absolute 24/7 dependable power anytime?
Install 8000 watts of solar on your home and have a battery bank that can store 5 days worth of power in it. problem solved.
Quick side note... 8kw of solar would provide perhaps 1/3 of my power requirements for my house...
What do you suggest I do for the other 16kw? And that is just what I need for today, there are losses in storing it in batteries and reusing it, so I'd probably need 30kw of solar, which by the way won't fit on my roof.
I can get 10kw up there, barely. I've had it priced. Not counting tax credits, it is about $35,000 to get it all installed. Batteries for a week would likely double that price. The panels themselves are cheap, $10K for them, the rest is labor, inverter, mounting them on the roof, etc.
LiFePO4 batteries work awesome at this and have an insane lifespan while accepting abuse well. Install 8000 watts of solar on your home and have a battery bank that can store 5 days worth of power in it. problem solved.
5 days worth of power is also likely not enough, some winter storms last longer than that, but ignoring that for a minute...
Do you have any idea what such a system costs? Until the price drops a lot more, it simply won't happen.
Note: It isn't the price of the panels, those are already cheap. Installing them and adding all the other parts is what costs too much.
for the price of upgrading a whole cities power grid you could make each home a separate power system off the grid.
That is a nice talking point, but it isn't true.
I can't install solar by itself cheaply enough to make sense, you want to add a week of battery to that as well. It would easily triple my power cost.
The power grid provides me 24/7 unlimited power for 10 cents per KWh. We are a long way, if ever, from home solar and batteries doing that.
Large grids pretty much buffer local variations out.
Perhaps, but only if the grids are redesigned and rebuilt. Even then the grids aren't as large as you might think.
Texas is largely on its own grid, and likes it that way. We have stable power prices, stable power delivery, and don't have to deal with other state government whims.
Your water heater can pause for a while and pocket a rebate to boot.
That would require a new hot water heater, and it would require that I WANT it to pause. We have 2 hot water tanks, 50 gallons each, because this is a large house with 4 bathrooms and 5 people. At times, we'll have all 4 showers running, that sucks up a lot of hot water. Or perhaps the kids want to take a bath. That is the perfect time to run the clothes washer and dishwasher for Mom.
Maybe you have some thermal storage units
Oh goodie, you want to spend MORE money. You are one of those people who thinks you can solve everything if you're just allowed to spend everyone else's money as you see fit, without their permission.
Do you know why I have hot water heaters? They cost less than tankless units. The tankless units might use less energy over time (debatable, but lets give them that), but they cost twice as much money up front. The cost of natural gas to heat them is trivial.
The result is load shifting that buys time for alternative sources to spool up
People don't have to load shift today, why should they want a more expensive power system tomorrow where they do, while requiring all new stuff?
Frankly you can take those ideas and stuff them where the sun doesn't shine, that is about what they are worth.
It is still a pilot effort. But it will spread.
No, they won't... once regular people are told they no longer have control over the stuff in their house, they'll tell you to get stuffed.
Fair enough... except don't we close up most of them to return the land back to nature?
If we don't want to do that, how do we get them to hold water? Where do we get the water? What does all that pumped storage cost and how much per KWh does it add to the "cheap" price of wind and solar?
the biggest are like 2 miles x 3miles x 600 feet deep. That would be a huge energy storage spot.
It would? How much water would that hold? Where do you put the water at the top of the hill? How many homes and businesses would that power and for how long, at what cost?
All fair questions, if the answers are reasonable, then I'm all for doing it. I just find that no one wants to address those questions.
A 'Start later' button doesn't imply no 'Start now' button. Most houses are good with one load/day and don't even fill that.
You don't have three kids, do you?:)
Our dishwasher has a start later button, I don't think we've ever used it.
Do I need to talk about the clothes washer and dryer that are run up to 4 times a day (not every day of course, but we average at least 2 loads a day).
How about the heat and air conditioning?
Paraphrasing a friend during the 1980s: 'Star wars is a good idea because it makes the Russians shit themselves. you want to make the Russians really shit? Send the Germans a 1000 tons of Steel and a ton of weapons grade plutonium.'
:) Patton was right, once we took out the Nazis, we should have rearmed and requipped the Germans and turned against Russia. Churchill would have done it, but FDR was a left wing idiot who had no idea what threat Russia really was.
Germany's military was, for the most part, a professional origination make up of highly trained people who tried their best to do their duty. It was the Nazis and the SS who were the problem.
People like Gerd von Rundstedt and Erich von Manstein would have served in the Allied Nations Forces commanding German troops against Russia. Instead of splitting Germany, if we had simply said (privately, in 1944) to those men, "bring Germany over to the Allied side, we will punish and kill the Nazi and SS leaders, but we'll let the regular German Army stand in place and will not punish the German people", history could have turned out very differently.
The first nuclear weapons might have been used against the USSR in 1945 instead of Japan in the march East towards Moscow.
Also: 'What is the lead time on a nuke plant in Germany?'
A lot longer than it should be, if NIMBYs didn't get in the way.
After all, we're always building a new nuclear ship in this country, we don't seem to take 20 years to build the reactors for those, I wonder why...
The entire invention of the atomic bomb took less time than it does to build a modern reactor, that's sad. To build a nuclear weapon, you need the reactors first, we built those during WWII in Oakridge, TN and had no problems doing it.
We know far more today but we seem to love to make it take forever and cost a ton of money.
It isn't about the tech, it is about politics and people's emotions. It is why breeder reactors in the US are illegal, because "oh my god the nuclears!" is a thing.
If Germany wanted to build 500 reactors in the next 10 years, she could. Germany is the sort of nation that can get stuff done when she puts her mind to it.
Slashdot Mirror
Not that there is anything wrong with that.....
Of course not... but it sounds like he is trying to balance self-interest with interest in all of society...
Imagine if Exxon tomorrow said, "we're going to invest half our profits into clean energy, because clearly there is no future in burning oil forever and if we don't get off our addiction, then we all suffer for it".
That too would impress the crap out of me.
I'm still unclear on WHY they paid so much over retail.
To get one of the first ones off the line.
Ford didn't buy it directly from Tesla, Ford bought it from the first owner who got it via referral promotion, then made a nice sum of profit in flipping it to Ford.
The $55K to Ford is trivial to get a few extra months of lead time in tearing it apart and testing it.
Thanks for posting that link...
Umm... My respect for Musk just went up a few degrees... yes, he is still self-interested, but I tend to believe him when he says:
Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. By the same token, it means the market is enormous. Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the worldâ(TM)s factories every day.
It is rare that a wealthy person takes that long view...
But there are no technical breakthroughs, of any kind, required. Gravel piles, electrified railroads and regenerative braking are all well understood.
Thanks for your reply and info... and yes, I'd tend to agree, there isn't anything tricky or fancy there it is just figuring out how to do it economically. But I don't doubt it can be done.
Nobody sane thinks we're going to 100% wind/solar. I expect 'on peak' to remain daytime for my life.
Actually, I see a lot of posts on Slashdot from people who think we will. I see 100% wind/solar/hydro to be rather hard to accomplish without spending insane amounts of money and basically building a new grid and power system from almost scratch.
My concern is the CO2 levels. I never used to care, I thought it was a bunch of hogwash. But I've become convinced over the past year or so that this is indeed a problem. I've been watching and reading climate scientists, the real boring ones that work at places like NASA, who are basically saying that if we wish to hold global temps to 2 degrees C over pre-industrial, then we have to cut 80% of our CO2 output by 2050, and even that only gives us a better than 50% chance of hitting that goal.
We really need to become carbon neutral by 2050 to be ok, and I see that as nearly impossible. To be honest, that scares me because I have three kids and I don't like the idea that they will grow up in a very changed world.
---
In short, this is one reason why I've been pushing for nuclear. I'm happy to build all the wind and solar we can, but I think to really replace coal, oil, and natural gas, we'll need nuclear, and we'll need a ton of it.
But that isn't popular...
Why would Tesla sell to Ford?
Lots of reasons...
First, Ford has a dealer network and service network that is far greater than anything Tesla can put together.
Second, Ford might well say, we have done well with EcoBoost, what if we offered EV versions of everything we sell. Musk has said that his goal is to promote EVs, not just sell them. If Ford came to him and said, "Merge with Ford and you'll be the head of the EV division, tasked with making EV versions of every Ford product" he might find that idea attractive.
Finally, while Tesla is growing, they have a huge challenge in front of them. Going from 50,000 cars to 500,000 cars is not nothing, selling and servicing them isn't as simple as you'd think, and many things could yet prevent him from hitting his targets.
A lot of people consider Tesla's success to be a forgone conclusion. That is never a good idea and it isn't true either. All companies run into challenges both big and small, some break through and win, some do not.
Thank you for posting the detailed reply.
Assuming your numbers pencil out, the space doesn't sound like an issue. 30 square miles for 24 hours of power reserves sounds quite doable.
Of course I doubt we'd put them all in one place, but if you did 1 square mile and did 60 of them for more reserves, then that is still totally reasonable.
So space may not be a concern. Then cost becomes an issue. That might not be something that either of us can figure out, but it is a conversation that I'd like to see happen.
I don't know where you went to school, but when I was in school they taught about this fancy amazing thing called "potential energy".
Funny... when I went to school, I learned about math, and money, and economics...
Yes, I'm aware of the concept of pumped storage, but no one wants to talk about the scale or cost required to even out a power grid that is more than 80% wind/solar...
Without a plan to grow to that scale, then they are just fun side projects, nothing more...
In some areas, geothermal is the answer.
Sure, but not in enough areas to matter.
This is exactly the problem. Do you want to solve the CO2 problem or not? If you don't, then fine, solar and geothermal away...
I'm interested in actually figuring out how to cut 80% of our CO2 emissions in the next 35 years, and no one seems to really have an answer to that.
Anything much short of that will not solve the problem.
* He's building a really big battery factory to drive down battery cost.
Yes, and I wish him well... when the batteries are actually cheaper, that'll be wonderful.
However keep in mind something... if he is the only person who can make cheap batteries and everyone else's batteries are expensive, then he has a problem. He can sell the batteries at great profits without bothering to build cars.
Lithium Ion batteries are largely commodities... If you suddenly found a way to get gold from the ground for $50 an ounce, this doesn't mean you suddenly start selling it for half the going rate, why leave all that money on the table. You sell it slowly, over time, and make obscene profits.
* Grid scale salt storage (or similar) is probably a much better way to go, but you have to convince the utilities to do that.
Sure, but the utilities largely answer to public utility commissions, which more or less answer to the public. And the public, at least in most of the US, wants 24/7 reliable CHEAP power.
I suspect a combination of wind/solar power, plus power storage, plus longer distance transmission, is going to be well north of current power prices. You'll run into a LOT of resistance with that.
There is a second factor. The coal, oil, and natural gas aren't going to be left in the ground without some form of compensation for the world, but there isn't really enough money to do that. We may be stuck with the nasty choice of saving the environment, or saving the economy. In the end, the economy is going to win that fight.
Much of India doesn't even *have* 24/7 power
Perhaps, but I suspect that the parts that don't, can't afford this either...
The parts that do, already have coal...
http://articles.economictimes....
At the end of the day, big business needs to sell the coal they have, so solutions will be found to sell it and burn it.
Yes, yes, you think you're cute...
Do some math, run the numbers, and you'll see that while that is nice, it doesn't mean much if you plan to power the grid with panels...
True, a layer of snow can cause a solar-cell blackout for awhile. But not many locales enjoy heavy snow for more than a few months.
^ quote from the link you provided... so exactly how are you planning to heat your home for the week you have little power?
Yes I do know... I spent $15,900 on mine.
$15,900... on what? What exactly was that? Because it sure as hell wasn't a 8kw solar system with a 5 day battery. Unless perhaps you installed it yourself and your state/utility had large incentives.
A 10kw solar system here with no battery is $35,000 to install before incentives, about $23,000 after incentives. The return on investment is over 15 years. Installing a battery would make it infinity, since it will need replacing before it pays for itself.
lastly the $2500 propane generator kicks in
Oh goodie, more money!
Most people waste that much money on stupid crap for their home like Granite countertops or a 20 jet comfort tub in the master bedrooms bath.
:) Well you can call it stupid crap all you want, but those are nice value adds to a house that increase its value.
---
The short version is, without a lot of other people's money, solar and batteries are a long way from making any kind of sense.
Please try to remember that, I told you that now about ten times.
I still can't figure out why you reply to me, when you are so completely clueless.
No one in the world is sending power at any quantity thousands of miles if they can avoid it, you lose too much in transmission.
Of course, you come from Germany, where you have been completely brainwashed into thinking you should pay 30+ cents per KWh, and the irony is that you've been lied to, thinking you're all green...
But you're really not. But go ahead and believe the propaganda, you seem to like it so.
If prices go up, they go up. That is going to happen no matter what.
Nonsense, they don't have to go up any faster than the rate of inflation.
A few places in the world have done a good job of doubling or tripling their power prices, such as Germany.
I doubt in many places you're going to be forced to dry your clothes at 2am. However, you may end up with a pricing model that encourages that. So what? That's why timers were invented.
First, why should I have to change? I get the same power rate any time of day or night. Why in the world do you think it is somehow a "good thing" to be forced to time of day pricing?
Second, timers don't help when my wife wants to do 4 loads of laundry on Saturday.
My father has a tank which contains about 1.5 metric tons of water. Why you have two times 50 gallons is beyond me. And bragging about it?
That is about 360 gallons of water, that is not normal for a house. Not in the US anyway, and I'd be shocked if holding 360 gallons of water was normal anywhere.
50 gallons is the standard size of hot water tank in the US. Other sizes exist, but when you need more hot water, it is cheaper to install two of them than it is to find something larger.
They are in series, so the hot water from tank 1 runs into tank 2, and tank 2 feeds the house.
The parent is wrong anyway, you don't use a smart grid to "switch appliances off", you use it to switch them on. If power prices go negative your heaters would heat your water for free, you would even earn money. And your utility would be grateful.
First, my hot water heaters don't run on the grid, they are run with natural gas.
Second, in order to provide enough hot water for everyone to have a shower in the morning, the water needs to be hot already, it doesn't heat quickly enough to maintain hot water forever for multiple showers (it will do it for one or two).
Finally, my hot water heaters don't talk to the grid, don't know what a "smart grid" is, and frankly I don't WANT anyone else controlling them.
As for the cost to heat the water, it is utterly trivial, so I don't care. I pay less than a dollar a day for hot water, for 5 people. You could get the cost to zero, it still wouldn't be worth replacing them.
Your power tank does not care if it is at 65 degrees plus or at 75. If it can get from 65 to 75 for free on a smart grid, why don't you take it?
The water temp very much does matter... the last thing I want is for the water to be TOO hot, it will scald if set too hot.
My fathers tank is heated by thermal solar.
Good for him, but that doesn't matter to anyone other than people who use that.
So our water heating costs are so low it can not be compared with your 10 cent / kWh of electricity.
As I've said, I don't use electricity to heat my water. Or my house, or dry my clothes, or cook, etc. Natural gas is used for all that.
Your fridge is actually running during daytime like this:
*snip* Why do you for funk sakes care what your fridge is doing when no one is at home? Earning or saving money with that?
First, that requires a new fridge, since you can't just apply power to it, then pull it, then apply it, then pull it.
So this plan requires all new appliances, for more or less everyone. Tell me how you'll pay for that.
Second, I have a home office, I was at home yesterday and today, so I do care. Tomorrow and Thursday I'll be at my office.
You fill the washing machine before you go to work. You empty it when you come home.
Come over on Saturday afternoon when it runs all day long.
Even when you are at home "watching the machine": what is the problem if it takes 90 minutes instead of 60 minutes using "free power" from a smart grid when heating the water?
It doesn't take more or less time to run, it has a fixed time to run. Or were you planning to replace that appliance as well?
Smart Grid! == EVIL! I Give up Freedom!
No you are not, Smart Grid == Super Cool! Free Market!
You are the one missing the point. I pay 10 cents per KWh right now, any time of the day or night. I have all the power I want, any time I want. Your solution takes that away from me and will end up costing MORE money, not less.
Oh ... I spare me a comment on your idea of freedom (holding the rest of the planet hostage) and free market (putting the rest of the planet into slavery).
Oh spare me, your smart grid has no chance of happening in my lifetime... and it isn't going to do squat to the planet one way or another.
Why do you care about that? That is not your problem but the power companies problem.
For Texas I would suggest pumped storage in the Appalachia and for California in the Rockies.
There is largely no grid connection from outside of Texas. Power transmission over that distance is very wasteful, most power is consumed within a few hundred miles of where it is made.
It becomes uneconomic to accept the losses of pumped storage, then transmit it over a thousand miles. You claim it is the power company's problem.
No, it is mine, because I don't want my power bill to triple like it did in Germany. I like my 10 cent per KWh power prices, thank you very much.
Maybe... or maybe Russia would have turned out like Japan. After being completely crushed, it could have been run for a decade under German/British/American supervision and transformed into a democracy.
Look at Germany back to 962 and the start of Otto I's reign in the Holy Roman Empire, move forward and you'll find a land, people, and nation that have done a decent job taking care of themselves for a very long time.
Today Germany has more than 20% of the GDP of the entire EU while having half the unemployment of the EU. If you include the UK and France, that is more than 50% of the GDP of the whole EU.
Frankly, if I was the US President, while I'd still give the UK a lot of attention, I'd focus equal attention on France and Germany, with the goal of having both nations come closer to the US in friendship and alliance.
Putting aside the problems of WWI and WWII (largely the same war, to be honest), Germany, France, and the UK are the triad that make Europe work and are the real wall that keeps Russia at bay.
Solar energy can be generated on snowy, cloudy days.
It can? When the solar panels are covered in snow?
How much over capacity has to be installed to provide for such days? What does that cost? What happens to the price of power to do that?
The new plan is pumped gravel. All that needs is a hill, some train track and two gravel piles. There are lots of losses, but with the right price ratio it's a money maker.
What is the cost of that system? What does that translate into cost per KWh of power when combined with the cost of wind and solar?
How far do you have to transmit that power, at what loss, to get it to all the places that don't have hills? Such as most of Texas and most of Florida?
Let me put this another way...
Do you think that we can keep a cost of 10 cents per KWh while moving to 100% wind/solar and using pumped/lifted storage, and long distance power transmission all while having absolute 24/7 dependable power anytime?
Install 8000 watts of solar on your home and have a battery bank that can store 5 days worth of power in it. problem solved.
Quick side note... 8kw of solar would provide perhaps 1/3 of my power requirements for my house...
What do you suggest I do for the other 16kw? And that is just what I need for today, there are losses in storing it in batteries and reusing it, so I'd probably need 30kw of solar, which by the way won't fit on my roof.
I can get 10kw up there, barely. I've had it priced. Not counting tax credits, it is about $35,000 to get it all installed. Batteries for a week would likely double that price. The panels themselves are cheap, $10K for them, the rest is labor, inverter, mounting them on the roof, etc.
You dont. you make your own power and store it.
I'd love to, but it costs too much.
LiFePO4 batteries work awesome at this and have an insane lifespan while accepting abuse well. Install 8000 watts of solar on your home and have a battery bank that can store 5 days worth of power in it. problem solved.
5 days worth of power is also likely not enough, some winter storms last longer than that, but ignoring that for a minute...
Do you have any idea what such a system costs? Until the price drops a lot more, it simply won't happen.
Note: It isn't the price of the panels, those are already cheap. Installing them and adding all the other parts is what costs too much.
for the price of upgrading a whole cities power grid you could make each home a separate power system off the grid.
That is a nice talking point, but it isn't true.
I can't install solar by itself cheaply enough to make sense, you want to add a week of battery to that as well. It would easily triple my power cost.
The power grid provides me 24/7 unlimited power for 10 cents per KWh. We are a long way, if ever, from home solar and batteries doing that.
Large grids pretty much buffer local variations out.
Perhaps, but only if the grids are redesigned and rebuilt. Even then the grids aren't as large as you might think.
Texas is largely on its own grid, and likes it that way. We have stable power prices, stable power delivery, and don't have to deal with other state government whims.
Your water heater can pause for a while and pocket a rebate to boot.
That would require a new hot water heater, and it would require that I WANT it to pause. We have 2 hot water tanks, 50 gallons each, because this is a large house with 4 bathrooms and 5 people. At times, we'll have all 4 showers running, that sucks up a lot of hot water. Or perhaps the kids want to take a bath. That is the perfect time to run the clothes washer and dishwasher for Mom.
Maybe you have some thermal storage units
Oh goodie, you want to spend MORE money. You are one of those people who thinks you can solve everything if you're just allowed to spend everyone else's money as you see fit, without their permission.
Do you know why I have hot water heaters? They cost less than tankless units. The tankless units might use less energy over time (debatable, but lets give them that), but they cost twice as much money up front. The cost of natural gas to heat them is trivial.
The result is load shifting that buys time for alternative sources to spool up
People don't have to load shift today, why should they want a more expensive power system tomorrow where they do, while requiring all new stuff?
Frankly you can take those ideas and stuff them where the sun doesn't shine, that is about what they are worth.
It is still a pilot effort. But it will spread.
No, they won't... once regular people are told they no longer have control over the stuff in their house, they'll tell you to get stuffed.
I would suggest using some old open pit mines.
Fair enough... except don't we close up most of them to return the land back to nature?
If we don't want to do that, how do we get them to hold water? Where do we get the water? What does all that pumped storage cost and how much per KWh does it add to the "cheap" price of wind and solar?
the biggest are like 2 miles x 3miles x 600 feet deep. That would be a huge energy storage spot.
It would? How much water would that hold? Where do you put the water at the top of the hill? How many homes and businesses would that power and for how long, at what cost?
All fair questions, if the answers are reasonable, then I'm all for doing it. I just find that no one wants to address those questions.
A 'Start later' button doesn't imply no 'Start now' button. Most houses are good with one load/day and don't even fill that.
You don't have three kids, do you? :)
Our dishwasher has a start later button, I don't think we've ever used it.
Do I need to talk about the clothes washer and dryer that are run up to 4 times a day (not every day of course, but we average at least 2 loads a day).
How about the heat and air conditioning?
Paraphrasing a friend during the 1980s: 'Star wars is a good idea because it makes the Russians shit themselves. you want to make the Russians really shit? Send the Germans a 1000 tons of Steel and a ton of weapons grade plutonium.'
:) Patton was right, once we took out the Nazis, we should have rearmed and requipped the Germans and turned against Russia. Churchill would have done it, but FDR was a left wing idiot who had no idea what threat Russia really was.
Germany's military was, for the most part, a professional origination make up of highly trained people who tried their best to do their duty. It was the Nazis and the SS who were the problem.
People like Gerd von Rundstedt and Erich von Manstein would have served in the Allied Nations Forces commanding German troops against Russia. Instead of splitting Germany, if we had simply said (privately, in 1944) to those men, "bring Germany over to the Allied side, we will punish and kill the Nazi and SS leaders, but we'll let the regular German Army stand in place and will not punish the German people", history could have turned out very differently.
The first nuclear weapons might have been used against the USSR in 1945 instead of Japan in the march East towards Moscow.
Also: 'What is the lead time on a nuke plant in Germany?'
A lot longer than it should be, if NIMBYs didn't get in the way.
After all, we're always building a new nuclear ship in this country, we don't seem to take 20 years to build the reactors for those, I wonder why...
The entire invention of the atomic bomb took less time than it does to build a modern reactor, that's sad. To build a nuclear weapon, you need the reactors first, we built those during WWII in Oakridge, TN and had no problems doing it.
We know far more today but we seem to love to make it take forever and cost a ton of money.
It isn't about the tech, it is about politics and people's emotions. It is why breeder reactors in the US are illegal, because "oh my god the nuclears!" is a thing.
If Germany wanted to build 500 reactors in the next 10 years, she could. Germany is the sort of nation that can get stuff done when she puts her mind to it.