VW, BMW, Mercedes, We Will Think Aboout it Options

[914Sixer]

Not putting the gas engine to bed yet.

[Chris914n6]

Environmentalists, the people that think it's good to create electricity from burning trees because it's "renewable". There are over 200 bio-matter electricity plants in the US alone.

But why not skip the perfectly reasonable interim hybrid cars and go straight to the expensive EVs and the crazy expensive infrastructure upgrades to meet that goal.

I'm sure there are a few better things to spend a few trillion dollars on that would result in more than a roughly 2% drop in ghg, I just don't have time to read about all of it.

If I did the math right, 1 trillion dollars would just about buy enough solar panels to power the entire US this year. It would solve the grid problem and stationary batteries should be cheaper to make.

[horizontally-opposed]

If I did the math right, 1 trillion dollars would just about buy enough solar panels to power the entire US this year. It would solve the grid problem and stationary batteries should be cheaper to make.

Solar may not work everywhere, but we've been blown away by the system we installed last year. The system is making 170% of our need, rather than the 108% targeted.

We only got to solar by first considering a whole-house generator. Home battery + solar was similar money out of pocket, quieter, cleaner, safer (no fuel storage or extra NG lines), self-contained, more likely to work after an earthquake, and a way to eliminate our dependence on PG&E. Our primary motivator was keeping our business going during PG&E's safety outages. Unanticipated upsides include A/C run by the sun, a monthly bill fixed at 2020 electric rates, and no more bills after 2030. We can also charge an EV or plug-in without the grid if we decide to add one at some point.

The fact that I still thought solar tech was about where it was in the 1980s (in other words, not all that viable…) is indicative of bigger problems with consumer education—and it's clear that PG&E would like to discourage residential solar. Thankfully, its recent effort to do so failed miserably. While solar and home batteries ain't perfect (nothing is…), their time has come in a lot of places, IMHO. It's worth looking into…