Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire I would not be investing in electric companies

And yet your righteousness does not force you into another place to draw your sustenance? Strange that. miles

You forgot to mention that wind and solar are subsidised by the .gov and are not self sufficient. The technology is not self supporting and either way the homeowner pays for it either through taxes or usage fee.

I'd rather stick worth dino iuice, it costs me a lot less in the end.

Interesting it could power a 5 ton AC in 120 degree temps all day and night, along wiht multiple freezers/fridge and the rest of the house.

Maybe in the future, but I don't see it being any cheaper in the end... solar panels and all have finite lives.. 10 years or so and ain't cheap....

But it could well work out years from now if all got tweaked out.

I think my stock in electric stuff is just fine for the time being.

This also... not to mention my 5 ton RV... and power my tractor around the farm etc...

The future in non-automotive energy is natural gas. For autos it will remain gasoline and diesel with small displacement turbo/supercharged engines. I just bought my wife an Audi crossover (Q5) with a supercharged 3 liter V6 that just scoots while delivering decent gas mileage.

I think Apple is going to acquire Tesla (the whole company).

Just a half a quarters cash flow for Apple.

Well ... we don't look at it that way.

We have power when others do not.

We had 32 days over 100 heat factor this summer with 17 of those straight up over 100 before figuring humidity. With that, we had to download grid power to bring the batteries back-up three days during peak and for a couple of hours a few times early in the mornings.

Our battery bank should be good for ten years. We're a little over two years into it now and they are still going strong.

What a lot of people do not realize is that, especially here in the sunny South, your batteries experience very little drain and strain during peak hours because the panels provide direct juice to the inverter(s) when the sun is peaking. Do you have to manage what appliances you use and when ... sure you do, but that's okay.

We sell surplus energy back to the power company. Amortized, given a ten year average prior to installing the system and taking into account credits for wattage hours we sell back to the power company, the system easily pays for itself within ten years while allowing us independence from the grid and no power outages, surges, bills to pay or obligation to allow strangers on the property to read the meter.

In essence, we are completely energy independent because we also have a Lister Peter diesel generator that we've used to bring the battery bank back up to full capacity for less than a gallon of diesel. We bought a large surplus propane generator at an auction (local chicken house farmers) that was barely used. He paid nearly $20k .... we bought it for $3,500.00.

We've got solar hot water and, along with a wood stove in the dining room and gas stove and burners in the kitchen we're covered on those fronts.

The wood stove, along with a fireplace, provides our heat on those rare winter days where it gets cold enough to need them in this part of the country.

My next project is going to be putting-in a boiler.

It's all about changing your lifestyle but IMHO it is well worth it. We do without nothing that those on the grid have, yet we're completely independent of the grid unless we choose to burn some credits for whatever reason. Being on a CoOp, our yearly checks from the power company have been impressive.

Edited to add: The tax write-off alone made it worth our while. It was win-win for us all the way around.

It took us nearly 30 years to get back into building nuke plants, and they're going at a snail's pace (honestly, I think I could build one faster all by myself). Every step there's a court challenge. Can you imagine what the resistance from the tree hugging nutters is going to be when someone says they're going to build a fusion power plant. I don't see fusion power happening in our lifetimes. They may crack the fusion nut, but I don't see a power plant happening while I'm still breathing unless I live to be 100 (and none of you are hoping for that )

Fusion has very little radioactive waste, if any. So it will be welcomed by all and money will be spent to build the power plants. It will take high powered lasers to get it started. Once started if it can be contained, it will be a game changer.

If I am not mistaken, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla drove one cross country recharging at his fast charge stations this past summer. From the map of the fast charge stations it is across the middle and southern part of the country. I don't think the northern route has been finished yet.

Just how subsidized are they? Way too much. The Bonneville Power Admin is a federal agency that controls the power production in the northwest. A few years ago, we had a high water year. During the spring runoff, the hydro dams along the lower Snake and Columbia rivers were producing more power than the grid could handle. There are 1000's of windmills along the Columbia. The grid couldn't handle their power so they had to shut down for a month. In most industries, if they overproduce, they shut down and take a hit until the market opens up of until their inventory drops. Not in this case. BPA paid them for the power they didn't produce while they were shut down, with our tax money, of course.

So it sounds like you don't get a bill from the power company at all? Why shouldn't you? You are still hooked up to the transmission lines, correct? Why shouldn't you have to help pay for maintenance cost on those lines? If you want to be totally independent, then you should not be hooked up to the transmission lines at all.

You are assuming a lot.

last I checked, question marks mean I am asking questions, no? But you can assume that I am assuming all you want if it makes you feel better.

Nuclear and coal are government subsidized as well; but for some reason no one really talks about that. So it's okay to subsidize coal and nuclear, but not wind and solar; I wonder why that is?

These days nuclear power is by far the most expensive of all sources. That's because our nuke plants are so old. In all states that went deregulated "stranded costs" were the big issue. "Stranded costs" are for the power companies that have nuke plants, they complained that the government made them invest in nuclear, and in a competitive market they cant compete on costs. "Stranded costs" becomes another "hidden" subsidy of nuclear power in the deregulated states. Not to mention the long term storage issues of nuclear, that's on the taxpayers dime. So there are some costs that are just absorbed by the government that never even get calculated into the "price of power".

Yep. If the government doesn't pay for most of it, people won't be able to afford the initial investment. Louisiana this year got rid of the tax subsidy for solar panels, and those companies are going out of business right and left.

Maybe someone will invent warp drive before all the [bleep] hits the fan.

Pizz poor posts, the both of them. Pointless but if you feel better...

If you're hooked to the 'grid' you are in the billing. We had 2 houses on our property with separate meters. One house was completely shut off, no electric use, but the bill was still $27 a month for the meter.