Home Generator Plan (Page 4): And the well pump. Mine will need a couple KW.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

fetzler wrote:

...I remind folks that keeping a 100W or less radio and computer going under emergency power is a trivial task when compared to keeping your furnace or A/C going.

And the well pump. Mine will need a couple KW.

ecblackiii Loc: Maryland

jerryc41 wrote:

This is interesting. The local electric company will give homeowners $550 the first year and $300 a year after that if they use their whole-house generators during peak demand times. Considering the cost of gasoline or propane, I don't think homeowners would come out a head, especially after paying $3,000 - $5,000 for the generator. This would run from June 1 - September 30 every year.

It's not to help you save money. It's to reduce the peak load on the electrical power system so they won't have to spend money to build additional capacity to meet the peak demand.

fetzler Loc: North West PA

Effate wrote:

I believe it depends on technological development and economic feasibility. By political will are you suggesting our government pass legislation that makes carbon based alternatives too expensive because I can tell you that isn’t working in California where we pay a dollar a gallon more for gasoline than the national average and double the costs of some states for electricity and still experience rolling blackouts.

It is important to consider that f****l f**ls have for many reasons have lifted much of mankind out of real poverty where starvation, freezing and exposure to serious diseases with no cure was a daily possibility. At this time, there no other sources of energy except perhaps nuclear energy that are capable of delivering the energy needed by a modern society. Just try living like many did in 1830 on the frontier.

The minerals to construct the batteries are hardly environmentally friendly. Solar and Wind farms are large destroy the environment in their vicinity. Construction of batteries,solar cells and components of windmills requires the mining of toxic minerals from parts of the world that are unfriendly to the US. Mining is frequently done using s***e labor. Our Petroleum workers are sk**led and well paid individuals.

Remember petroleum is a natural organic plant based material. Government is incapable of inventing anything. Only creative individuals and the free market can provide true innovations that are truly useful.

fetzler Loc: North West PA

DirtFarmer wrote:

And the well pump. Mine will need a couple KW.

You are right.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

ecblackiii wrote:

It's not to help you save money. It's to reduce the peak load on the electrical power system so they won't have to spend money to build additional capacity to meet the peak demand.

So it's not to help you save money. It's to help them save money at your expense.

Horseart Loc: Alabama

We don't have much cold weather here but I have a natural gas fireplace just in case. I can turn it on low, close off my bedroom and sleep on the couch if I have to.

ecblackiii Loc: Maryland

DirtFarmer wrote:

So it's not to help you save money. It's to help them save money at your expense.

Correct!

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

fetzler wrote:

I see things have "improved" themselves ... (show quote)

Didn’t know you were a ham.

73,
DE K4CKB

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

fetzler wrote:

It is important to consider that f****l f**ls have... (show quote)

Petroleum is power dense, certainly. But the people who bull-headedly insist on using it forever are h*****g onto something that k**ls the planet.

It’s also like every other “necessary” consumable that has to be bought from a processing and distribution source. It becomes addictive.

The ultimate power source is the sun. However we can learn to harness it, we need to develop systems to do so. Simultaneously with that development, we need to train disrupted workers to work in new fields.

If major companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, and others can run 100% of their operations on solar energy and still send excess energy to the grid, it is certainly viable. We just need to develop the technology for smaller operations.

John Hicks Loc: Sible Hedinham North Essex England

I cannot believe the stories I am reading about power outages.
I am a lot luckier than you guys as I live in the UK where we do not get the extremes of weather that you do in the USA.
How're in Scotland they get cold times in the winter down to -15 to -20 and in heavy snow they will get power outages for up to a day but that rarely happens.
Where I live in North Essex we get temperature down to -13 in winter and we have only one power outage in the last eight years.
Another thing to take in account is the UK is a lot smaller country and we do not get the extremes of weather that the USA gets.
Finally one of the comments was have the cables under ground
Don't even think about it overhead power lines are in insulated and therefore are cheaper to produce , cables under ground would have to be insulated and that would mean the copper cross sectional
area being increased five fold or more with the resultent costs.

John Hicks Loc: Sible Hedinham North Essex England

I cannot believe the stories I am reading about power outages.
I am a lot luckier than you guys as I live in the UK where we do not get the extremes of weather that you do in the USA.
How're in Scotland they get cold times in the winter down to -15 to -20 and in heavy snow they will get power outages for up to a day but that rarely happens.
Where I live in North Essex we get temperature down to -13 in winter and we have only one power outage in the last eight years.
Another thing to take in account is the UK is a lot smaller country and we do not get the extremes of weather that the USA gets.
Finally one of the comments was have the cables under ground
Don't even think about it overhead power lines are in insulated and therefore are cheaper to produce , cables under ground would have to be insulated and that would mean the copper cross sectional
area being increased five fold or more with the resultent costs.

majeskiphoto Loc: Hamilton, Ontario

Where I live, and being 'on the grid' Your solar panels generate power that Must be sold back to the power provider, they pay you, or discount you for what the solar panels contribute. In the case of an outage your still S**te out of Luck, you are not even allowed storage batteries!

Effate Loc: El Dorado Hills, Ca.

Why isn’t nuclear generation a bigger piece of the equation. It is still the largest source of non-carbon generated electricity in the U.S. France produces 70% of its energy from nuclear and due to low energy costs is the largest exporter of electricity. I am absolutely for cleaner energy but find it ridiculous that we used more oil this year than any recent year and are buying oil from the likes of Russia when we were energy independent a year ago. What happened to “Putin bad”. No tax on the middle class is a joke when we pay a dollar more for gasoline per gallon and almost 9% more for everything else year over year. It doesn’t have to be deducted from your paycheck to be a back door tax that hits everyone including the poor.

majeskiphoto Loc: Hamilton, Ontario

3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

home brewer wrote:

home generators are not renewable energy.

But they can take load off the utility, and if you run them on biodiesel, they are renewable. Of course it has to be a diesel. I wouldn't run one on gasoline for intermittent use. Gasoline goes bad too quickly.