Yeah. Everything is clamming up at the moment. Everything. I've been looking for positions outside of Florida for almost two years now. I've had a few interviews, but in general nothing. Ten years ago I was walking into places and getting offers. It's a very different world now. I'm relieved my oldest daughter got a VERY good job right out of school which a chemical research company that dies government contract work. But my second oldest, who was an art major? I'm nervous what she will do. It was already an uphill battle, but now, with AI and all that crap? It's depressing.
Yyyyep. Almost 30 years of straight Republican leadership has just been wonderful for this state. So wonderful. Really, a model for the rest of the country.
Will be interested to see if the Republicans go forward with the major property tax cut they keep talking about. I’m sure that will lure even more unsuspecting people down south.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...=phx-industries-energy&embedded-checkout=true Natural Gas produced electricity is at a 17 year price high and only expected to get more expensive. Meanwhile solar is already cheaper and continues to drop along with the price of grid level storage (thank you Biden and the IRA). California has now had multiple days (as in 24 hour periods) where 100% of their electricity demand has been handled by non-fossil fuel based sources + batteries. Ironically enough Texas will get there either this summer or next (lots of sun plus a lax regulatory environment = lots of solar and batteries going up quickly).
Looked into getting solar installed on my house, but its roof faces aren't angled where it'd be efficient
mine does face the right way.....40,000.00$. only cover about 50% of my monthy usage (4 adults, 4 dogs) just could not justify it.
I have roughly 500 square feet of slightly angled south-facing roofline, so I've thought about it. But I also haven't had time to really dig into the math or research the companies out there, and I'm pretty sure that the companies with the most aggressive sales teams are not going to be the best ones to work with.
Have you looked into balcony solar? It can't power your whole house, of course, but it can help cut down on how much you have to pull from the grid. Some are setup so that you literally just plug the thing into a wall socket, while others are connected to a battery for use as a backup during outages (when the battery's fully charged, the juice goes into whatever appliances are plugged into the battery).
We paid about $5000AUD/$3500USD for our 10kW system, in the best conditions in summer can do around 8.5kW due to our almost flat roof. Right now it's 1.30 in the afternoon, clear winters day, and getting around 3.9kW.
California recently "legalized" balcony solar (re: restricted power companies from preventing people from using balcony solar). That's my next home project, because although I have plenty of south-facing roof, I'm currently using it for passive solar to heat my pool so that I'm able to swim 8 months out of the year without my wife complaining that it's too cold. I have some outlets on my side yard that faces south/southwest that would be perfect for plugin solar.
Powering an entire house 24/7 with solar is not easy. But I think balcony power could be a great help in lowering bills. I like the idea of being able to run a fridge and maybe even a small a/c in a crunch. Battery technology is getting better all the time, so the goal of off grid living might be getting closer but I think it's always going to be just out of reach for the rest of my life.
Oh for sure. The goal isn't to power the whole house year-round. But with 13-16 hours of sunlight and 100 degree days during the summer, it would make me less reluctant to set the A/C lower.
Maybe, maybe not. BYD seems to be going all-in on its solid state battery. They expect to have them on the market in 2030, and at the same price, or lower, than lithium batteries around the same time.
No battery, even a couple of years ago when we got the panels installed the numbers didn't stack up for us, however since battery prices have (and continue to) go down we hope to get one in the near future. Can't remember the first exact price but may have been more like 5500, so round it up to USD$4000. Price included everything. Panels, inverter, installation on our house. There are subsidies on getting panels installed, Without them probably would have been around AUD$3000 more expensive. Although that's hard to say exactly, the rebates are market based and installers tend to just price their packages based on what they expect they can get. Much more government detail of that can be seen here: Even without those credits (and they're on track to be phased out entire by 2030) we'd still be significantly cheaper than the US for solar installs. Biggest reasons for that seem to be: Friendly regulatory environment. All the paperwork and processes for getting home solar installed are as streamlined and standardized as possible. The more standardized set of install packages means installers are able to do more bulk purchases of hardware. Lack of tariffs on the hardware imports. Across Australia, over 40% of households have rooftop solar now. In my state of South Australia it's around 57% of households with rooftop solar.
My 6kW, 10kWh system was like $27,000 all in. But I’m in CA so my payback period is still only 7 years.
Do you get paid to feed power into the grid or is payback just based off what you save on paying for power?
Yeah i get paid but it’s pretty anemic compared to retail rates except during peak hours during June-September. I can make > $10/day dumping saved battery power to the grid those hours, but it’s only paid out twice a year. The rest of the payback is based on less import from the grid.
Interesting thing I found out the other day is that - at least in the UK - most solar setups won't keep your house running during a power cut as they have safeties to prevent your house trying to send electricity back to the grid whilst engineers might be working on damaged cables. You need special isolators.
Growing up in hurricane country long term power outages were a regular thing. You’d shut off shore/grid power on the breaker and then plug your jenny (generator) into your dryer outlet (240v v 120v for a regular outlet) to run your house minus AC. And yeah. A classmate’s father killed a linesman forgetting to turn off shore power.
Yep. I had to pay a bit more for a setup that works during power outages. It’s pretty great though. I can throw my mains breaker switch and everything just keeps on humming. No more outages, even transient ones.
The norm here is that if you want that blackout protection you need a battery, largely for that reason. You can technically get setups that allow it purely with panels and no battery, but the cost and limitations of them mean I don't know anyone who's bothered.
