As a result, all the benefit of wind and solar goes to the people owning the generation capacity, rather than retail utility customers.

Building out solar/wind still helps the consumer, because reducing the number of days or the number of hours per day the price is set by the marginal fossil fuel kWh will still bring down monthly averages.

And even for the hours where the price is set by a fossil fuel producer, it’s still generally better for the consumer when that particular hour needs to bid for the cheapest 100 MWh versus 500 MWh that may include even more expensive sources.

they could have bought a <$25k used EV last year and saved $4k with the EV tax rebate.

The people who were in the market for a car last year are by and large not the same people who are in the market today.

Plus let’s not forget, the actual EVs on the used market 12 months ago were different than today’s. Someone looking to buy a 3-year-old car today has to look for something originally sold in 2023, whereas 12 months ago they were looking at 2022 vehicles, with fewer models available and significantly fewer vehicles actually manufactured and sold.

For everything the Trump administration has done to make solar and wind power less economically feasible, it turns out his war in Iran has done way more to make fossil fuel consumption less economically feasible as well.

There really was a huge increase in the number of EV models available between model years 2018 and 2023.

So now, when you’re looking to buy a 3-year-old car, you have so many more EV options to choose from even compared to just 2 years ago.

You can choose different form factors (small cars, sedans, wagon/crossover/small SUVs, medium SUVs, literal pickup trucks), and basically any price tier from economy to ultra luxury high end.

Not every ecological niche was filled in the past 5 years, and some still need a bit more competition, but even with some pullback over the last year there are still plenty of new EVs hitting new categories (e.g., true three-row SUVs and minivans) that will feed into tomorrow’s used market.

And not every model will survive. The future of all-electric full size pickups looks pretty grim. Some entire companies might not survive the EV transition (looking at you, Honda). But overall, the used market will fill out with what was hitting the new market 5-10 years ago, and we’ll start to see a lot of consumer preferences start showing what the future of cars will look like.

goshery store

I’m curious whether voltage even matters, and what the wattage of each burner is, and what the total power max for the whole stove is.

A typical US stove draws either 40A or 50A at 240V, so that’s a max power of about 12,000W. But each burner is usually limited to something about 5000-7500W.

With induction, the heat is efficiently placed right into the pan, so actual performance probably matches a lower nominal power resistive stove (or gas stove).

Almost every American home has 240V coming in, with 2 hot wires with 120V AC exactly 180° out of phase with each other, and a neutral wire that’s supposed to be roughly ground voltage. The standard is to split the 240V into 120V for each circuit at the actual breaker panel, by feeding each normal circuit in the house one hot and one neutral wire. But setting up a particular circuit for 240V service is trivial by using both hot wires.

And the actual distribution grid itself, before it hits the transformer that steps it down to 240V right before actual customer meters, is going to be much, much higher voltage in any country. Higher voltage means less line loss, so power lines use high voltage. That part doesn’t differ significantly between countries.

Anyway. That’s why most American electric stoves and ovens are actually 240V.

The feeling comes from real world experiences with electric cars, which for 90% of Americans is primarily dealing with Tesla. Stupid door handles, stupid steering wheels, stupid touchscreen based controls. It’s a real complaint, and if it’s coming from Americans it’s primarily complaining from the dominant electric car brand they’ve had experience with, which is an American brand with American made cars.

But this is a distrust that is primarily applied to Tesla, an American car company whose cars are made in America. You’re not making any sense.

One way I get around this is to put a thermal mass like a cast iron pan under the pot I want to cook slowly since it evens out the pulses but then it heats extremely slowly.

Yeah, at that point it’s just like a shitty resistive heating stove with extra steps.

Yes but how is it xenophobia?

This is Xenophobia wrapped up in our emotions around cars

What? Tesla is like the worst offender for this.

I think they’re allowed to, but just can’t hook it up to the grid. The Alabama Power fee looks to me like it applies only to generation capacity that is actually connected to the grid, under an interconnection agreement with the utility.

I can imagine a completely separate circuit, not at all connected to the rest of the electrical system, that only powers things that don’t need grid backup: EV chargers, HVAC equipment, other heating or cooling equipment, etc. You’d probably want a decent amount of battery backup, though, to make the best use of that equipment.

Being prepared for emergencies is a good thing. But not everything we do has to actively prepare for an emergency.

This article is about people installing equipment that alleviates their energy costs and reduces the amount of energy they draw from the grid, especially during high demand times. That is worth doing, entirely separately from being prepared for emergencies.

So the fact that this equipment does not prepare for emergencies is relevant to know, but doesn’t change whether it’s a good idea to install the equipment.

It’s possible, but needs to be engineered for safety, and that design/testing/certification will increase the cost and complexity.

You can have solar panels and a battery totally off grid, where the big battery just acts as a generator, with its own inverter creating AC power for anything you plug in. That’s really simple and cheap, but isn’t safe for connecting to and powering a grid-connected house circuit. So anything you want to power with one of these systems needs to be plugged into outlets that only get their power from these batteries.

You can add a grid-following inverter that safely matches the grid frequency AC, so that you can use the solar power you collect in your own normal home circuit, to power your own household appliances. But the simplest design here is a grid following inverter that doesn’t work when the grid isn’t connected. It can only add to something that already exists and can’t do things on its own.

If you want to do both, where it can work without grid power and it follows the grid when the grid power is on, you’ll have to design a system that can switch between the two modes without delivering power where it’s not expected or generating power that conflicts with the grid’s AC waveform. Making it automated, like an UPS system, is even more complicated.

It’s not impossible, or even that difficult, it just does add complexity and the engineering tradeoff is always the question of “what problem does this solve, and is solving that problem important enough to devote these resources to it?” For anyone on a reliable electric grid where power outages are rare, the answer is usually no.

I read the article’s main point as being that waste heat is all around us, and in places that get cold (like the Great Lakes region), that heat can be moved to where it is useful.

I’m thinking of the brain meme where each level represents something better:

1. Electric power is used to generate heat in places that need to be heated, using resistive heat.
2. Electric powered heat pumps move heat from air where it’s not needed to places that do need heat, using heat pumps that draw heat from ambient air.
3. Heat is transferred from places that actively need cooling to places that need heat.

The main point in the article is that if we’re using electricity to cool a place while also using electricity to heat a place, can we just use less electricity to move the heat from the place where it’s not wanted to the place where it is wanted?

So seen in that light, it’s not so much about how much thermal efficiency a power plant achieves, but rather a question about whether there is something better that can be done with that heat that doesn’t become electricity.

It might be cheaper in some settings.

For certain food styles, I buy bulk spices sometimes because I don’t like to pay for an entire jar I won’t use, knowing that most of it will go stale by the time I’m through the jar. Being able to buy tiny quantities is sometimes way cheaper.

I’m also mismatched in my conditioner and shampoo remaining where I can buy the matching set and let the difference persist, or I can try to buy a single catch-up bottle of whatever I have excess of, to hope that they even out by the time I get to the bottom of a bottle.

Basically, I can imagine where it might be preferable (for both cost and convenience) to buy an arbitrary amount of something rather than buy a fixed factory container of that thing. I know I already do it for certain things.