$200,000 a year spent at Disney?

Sharpel007:

Storage - better battery tech, we have had a few solid-state and chemistry advances but still need more.

Or use non-battery methods of energy storage.

Somewhere near your wind/solar farm, build two water reservoirs in a place where one can be higher than the other and the upper can be topped off as needed. Probably need to cover them to prevent evaporation.

When the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, use some of the generated power to pump water from lower to upper reservoir. When renewable power needs to be augmented, flow the water back down through generating turbines.

This is already being done near existing dams; both the US and Canada have systems around Niagra Falls. It'd take a bit more doing to build one away from an active dam, but still a lot easier than dealing with nuclear power or similar.

Brian Noble:

TL;DR summary: "Free lunch; there isn't one."

All of that is true, but it also lacks context, to an extent. All of that mineral extraction may do less damage than mining/drilling/burning fossil fuels, but I haven't seen anything that's particularly comprehensive. We also are just now generally starting to understand how recyclable these materials are. Giant car batteries didn't exist in volume until five or six years ago, and even now, most are still in pretty good shape for use. (Totaled cars represent a significant amount of "retired" batteries.) Economies of scale also play into it. If you were to get all of your power from a coal-fired plant, the carbon output per mile is still a fraction of burning gas.

But yes, none of it comes for free, but anecdotally it sure seems like it's a better outcome. Look at the improvement in air quality in the pandemic when people were burning less gas.

Sharpel007:

Storage - better battery tech, we have had a few solid-state and chemistry advances but still need more.

I don't think this is the challenge that skeptics believe it is. The amount of development and advancement in battery chemistry and energy density has also been obscene the last few years. It's not going to stop.

Infrastructure - the grid in the US, and most of the world is ancient and inefficient, and needs to connect to that better storage.

This is an education problem. When you stop thinking about centralized generation and storage, the grid doesn't matter. A distributed model works great, and there are countless existing examples of this today. There are entire subdivisions that are experimentally able to disconnect from the grid. I mean, the island of Kauai is an extraordinary case study in distributed generation, with multiple solar plants, storage, hydro and individual rooftop plants. The island is small enough to have a micro-grid of sorts, but you can replicate that anywhere (not the hydro necessarily, but some combination of solar, geo and wind depending on the geography). Iceland is almost entirely renewable, and people run plugs to their cars parked in streets. They're an example of how you can't get hung up on weather and/or type of renewable and declare it an unsolvable problem.

FPL has dozens of distributed solar/battery plants. US utilities are building more solar/battery than any other form of production, because the economics make sense. Utilities just want to sell electricity, so they want the cheapest fuel possible. It ain't fossil fuels or nuclear.

I suppose my bigger point is that innovation won't suddenly stop, and we're not remotely near any threshold of exhausting resources. The economics favor renewables, with no sign of that changing.

The economics are likely to change in November of 2024.

According to the UN we have to cut emissions by 43% of 2019 levels. That's essentially 1987 levels. We have until 2030 to do this. Yet, we are only on pace to drop them 2%. We can't just innovate our way out of this in a bit over 6 years. We've had over 20 years of warning and our emissions have gone up 50% since the turn of the century. We have to cut consumption too.

Decentralizing would go a long way but it’s just never going to happen at a scale that matters. I am a cynic. Maybe it’s just my Gen X nature. I’ve watched ****ty housing development after ****ty housing development go up around here and think about what could have been if they were required to have solar. I know multiple people in my extended family that sold their very nice suburban house and “built” their own brand new one even farther away from family and work.

I’ve looked into solar myself but in Western PA the return on investment is slower and I can only get a portion of my roof to produce due to a hills and tree cover. Those new developments are wide open! It’s such a wasted opportunity.

No, yes and yes. 🙂 California already requires new construction to have solar, and has since 2020. It's a matter of will, not ability.

Jeff:

It's a matter of will, not ability.

Hence my cynicism.

Jeff, you follow this more than anyone else I know. Have you seen any news about communities that are requiring multifamily housing complexes to install X number of vehicle charging station parking spaces when they are applying for building permits?

eightdotthree:

I’ve looked into solar myself but in Western PA the return on investment is slower and I can only get a portion of my roof to produce due to a hills and tree cover.

Same here, but it's getting better. I look in to it every few years, and last year I ALMOST did it. Just a few years back it was totally not worth it. Environmentally maybe, but financially it was a losing proposition. Last year it was around a break-even proposition. Hoping that in a few more years the needle will continue moving to make it worthwhile.

I'm not aware of any required charging for multi-family in the US, but I recall examples in Europe. The demand exists, as I recall, also can't find the article. DOE has a page dedicated to the topic, and there are a ton of municipal, state and utility incentives. I suspect the mass adoption of the NACS plugs will incentivize more installations. But yeah, two-thirds of Americans have garages to plug into, so we can't leave out the other third. Mind you, a friend who bought a Model 3 a year after me (2019) lived in an apartment, and had no issues even when there weren't many options. Heck, he drove to Portland and back in a huge loop that summer without issue.

Going solar can be financially viable if you have enough expendable cash to pay outright and not have to take out a loan, especially with the current interest rates. We priced out panels back in 2018, I believe, and it wasn't worth it. With a loan our payments were going to be well above what we were paying in electricity. The salesman was pushing hard for a 20 year lease with $0 down. The initial payments were going to be $90, minus any electricity generation. The kicker was the 3% annual increase over the life of the lease. Over the life of the lease we were going to pay a net of $26k in lease payments after subtracting off generation. That's for an 8 kW system. It wasn't until a few rounds of stimulus payments that we had enough money in the bank to make panels feasible. Same size system for $13,500 by pre-paying the lease. The cost was in line with what we would have paid for the panels outright while waiting on the tax rebates. By the way, the process from initial plans to full activation can take MONTHS. If you are ever looking to price out again the dead on winter may be your opportune time.

Illinois has a law going into effect on January 1st regarding new construction and charging infrastructure. It requires single-family and multi-family homes of 2-4 units to have conduit and reserved panel space for each unit that has a dedicated parking space. The owner of the unit is responsible for paying any costs associated with the installation of any charging equipment, including the line itself. It's a start since the non-Tesla charging network is so piss poor in the Chicago suburbs. But I don't think it will significantly move the needle on electric vehicle adoption. Price will do that.

When the manufacturers all switch to NACS, then Tesla chargers will just be chargers. That'll fundamentally change things.

And yeah, borrowing for solar is generally not a good deal, but so much of the business has been predicted on shady financing schemes. I think when rates come back down, while cost continues to drop, I think 10-year ROI with borrowed money will be possible.

Volkswagen owns Electrify America which is not quite a hot mess, but getting there. Do any other manufactures have a vested interest in a charging network? If not, it makes complete sense to switch over to the Tesla network.

Everything Chargepoint is rolling out right now they can swap out CCS for NACS "easily." I can't remember who toured their research lab, maybe Sandy Monroe, but that's where I saw that.

I think Nissan and VW Group are the last holdouts to announce support. Ford, GM, Honda, Kia, Hyundai, BMW Group, Volvo, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, and all of the EV starts, Lucid, Rivian, Polestar are in.

I’ve recently gained some interest in hydrogen vehicles. Other than infrastructure and cost, at least right now, they seem to have some advantages over electric vehicles that make them desirable.

On the other hand, I’m currently working to get a 45 year old carburetted car daily drivable, so I’m not so interested that I’m ready to buy any time soon.

The fact that you can't buy hydrogen everywhere makes the completely impractical. It takes a ton of energy to make hydrogen, and the cost per mile is considerably more than gasoline. It's like 30 cents per mile or something, a far cry from the 4 cents for an EV at FL electric rates. Gas in a generic hybrid is probably 10 cents per mile. Toyota was dogmatically invested in hydrogen because of the portability of it, and speed of fueling. They ignored the cost of production and distribution.

I generally get about 3 miles per kWh on my Volt. Obviously more in the warmer months. We are on the real time pricing plan and charge over night. The costs from midnight to 4 am are generally under 3 cents per kWh but can sometimes run into the negatives. Effectively I am paying 1 cent per mile. My weekly commute costs $1.75. Interestingly I found out in October that if the gas in the tank is too old the car forces the ICE to take over. The 3/4 full tank of gas that I had put in last Thanksgiving was too old for my car's liking.

Jeff:

I think Nissan and VW Group are the last holdouts to announce support. Ford, GM, Honda, Kia, Hyundai, BMW Group, Volvo, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, and all of the EV starts, Lucid, Rivian, Polestar are in.

Nissan is actually on board. VW isn't yet but I think it's only a matter of time. Electrify America announced this summer that they are adding NACS chargers to their stations. Tesla is also adding CCS1 chargers to some of theirs. The only reason we use Electrify America, other than port compatibility, is that my wife got three years of free charging when she bought her iD.4. The supply of chargers has not kept up with demand. That's assuming that the stations aren't down either.

Where do you live? Our power if fortunately flat rate, so we don't even bother trying to game it with the backup battery.

Hopefully VW is in before they start shipping the Buzz in the US. I want one, and I'm gonna put peace signs on it.

Interested in knowing what this 45 yr old car is. Personally, I find carburetors to be PFM. I could not for the life of me figure mine out, so it LS3 swapped! (Humblebrag) ('65 Impala)

It seems I've been reading about Hydrogen vehicles being "the next big thing" for 30 years now. I just don't see it happening, but what do I know?

I've ridden in Ride Service vans powered by compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and they seem highly impractical too. The last row of the Econoline-style van was removed for the tank, and we could all hear the noise of the tank and hose. That's how I knew to ask the driver. He was not happy, saying the company required him to purchase a CNG vehicle and it's not practical as a Contract Driver. Maybe as a work fleet for utilities, etc, but certainly not as a passenger carrying service, where removing capacity costs him business.

Jeff:

California already requires new construction to have solar, and has since 2020. It's a matter of will, not ability.

Do not forget the dollars and cents changing hands. The status quo is good for those in the various markets. When we talk about reducing carbon we talk about upsetting the status quo and the money changing hands. Lots of bribe money (you can call it lobbying if you feel better about that) changing hands in congress to keep things right where they are.

Tommytheduck:

Interested in knowing what this 45 yr old car is. Personally, I find carburetors to be PFM. I could not for the life of me figure mine out, so it LS3 swapped! (Humblebrag) ('65 Impala)

I remember your Impala. I just got a ‘79 Triumph TR7 this past June. To be clear, I’m still learning about how to adjust carbs but I haven’t had to mess with mine because they were professionally rebuilt a few years ago and run well.