RePete
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I wanted to install solar panels last year. But, we have some big trees. A guy came out, put up his light meter, and said "don't bother". It was a dissappointment. I may get another opinion.
Poll: Do you have, or plan to get, an electric car?
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Bilsch
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I don't like ford, but here is a link to what Ford is doing:
Ford F-150 Electric Pickup Truck: Everything We Know - Launch, Specs
Ford F-150 Electric Pickup Truck: Everything We Know - Launch, Specs
Where I live charging stations are almost impossible to find. And since town is a 30 mile roundtrip, most doctor visits are 300 mile roundtrips, and the nearest real airport is 200 miles away an electric car makes little sense. Having said that we also have a house in France that we will be spending several months each year at when my wife retires. Charging stations are everywhere. In our village there is a community owned bar-all proceeds go to their version of the PTA. There's a guy from a neighboring village who's there almost every Wednesday night because the charging station outside the bar costs him about $.40, and it takes just long enough for him to leisurely drink 2 beers. Over there it would certainly make sense to have an electric car, over here it doesn't.
As a guy who just retired from 40 years in the oilfields I assure you there will always be petroleum based fuels, but it will not always be affordable. Somebody will maintain a small niche refinery for those people who refuse to give up their stinky, nasty internal combustion powered vehicles. But the cost will be enormous. When it will happen I can't know, but it will.
I'm referring to the efficiency of power produced by the panel in relation to typical home application. I'm aware there are PV cells that are capable of double the best monocrystalline cells on the market for use in aerospace. However a panel that loses 0.8 efficancy per annum is banking on power rates to rise significantly over the next decade+. As I stated earlier, unfortunatley for my home due to position and surrounding trees my ROI would be well into 15 years even with the exorbitant rates I'm currently paying. Granted if they keep rising as they have been, solar + battery bank is going to start looking really good soon.
Efficiency of the panel does factor. If you buy a low efficiency panel to begin with, the ability of that panel to produce energy in 10-15 years will be a fair amount more impacted than a higher quality panel, but there is the tradeoff of upfront cost
So I started this reply on my home PC awhile ago and our local utility shut the power down to 200k people in rolling blackouts across Northern California. Since its dusk, solar would not have helped unless we had a way to store power. 20kw gen may might be ordered soon
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If only there was the slightest breeze right now.
Tempted to see how long I can run 2 refrigerators on an 8kw Prius battery.
Bilsch
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Just to give you an idea what is possible, my fridge draws an average of 1.6 kwh/day and the chest freezer an additional 0.6 and I have a 12 kwh LiFePo4 battery bank installed. So these appliances could run about 5.4 days before the batteries need some juice. But with a solar charge controller installed, I only need to make it to the next sunny day. Zombie apocalypse.. no problem.
I think it gets windier as altitude increases. Turbines are puzzling to someone like me who hasn't studied how exactly they work. Back when I lived near some wind farms (over a decade ago) I've been out running errands, noticed a serious lack of breeze, but on the way back I'd drive by a turbine and it was moving at a good pace. I've also noticed that they sometimes didn't run at all when it was very windy. It's something I'd like to discuss with someone who works on turbines.
Why limit yourself to one battery?
Oh man... I like the point you were going for, but did you have to bring Zombies into the mix? Am I the only one who is tired of Zombies?
I'm certainly no expert in solar panels, but my understanding is if you start off with a panel that has a higher efficiency you'll have less degradation over time. This website does a much better job of explaining losses. Basic gist of it is, in 20-25 years, a 5kW system will only produce 20% of it's original capacity...so 4kW. This is assuming your doing annual maintenance on your panels like washing, checking for damage etc. Still....4kW is better than nothing. After taking a look around at panel efficiency and losses again..it appears many of the numbers look better than they did a few years ago. It was assumed most panels lost about 1% a year. Now it's closer to 0.5-0.8% for many manufacturers. Sweet! Might be time to look at the numbers again.
Thats one hell of a system Bilsch. I think the LiFePo4 banks in that range are an extra $12-14k. Montana is no stranger to inclement weather. How does your system fair in the winter time?
My father used to work for a large SoCal power company as a transmission lineman. In fact many high tension power lines that cross the 5 fwy in southern california as well as palm springs and the high desert area were put up by him and his crews. That said..I grew up around that industry and worked in it myself for awhile but have little knowledge of wind farms in general. I'd be curious for a more detailed explanation from someone in the industry as well. I do know that geography and altitude play an important part in where wind farms are set up and how their outputs are calculated. Often times if the wind is blowing hard and you see the turbines not moving, it's a protection mechanism to keep them from spinning apart. Other times it's to try and balance out the demand on the grid. Too much electricity produced is almost as bad as not enough.
Bilsch
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I think even your .5-.8 efficiency loss per year is too high. My 12 year old Schott panels have only lost right around 3% of their capacity. My Panasonic panels are only a couple years old now and the loss is still lost in the noise of the data and will take several years more to see anything. Sunpower panels guarantee max 0.25% per year loss. The quality of these things are getting better all the time.
Your estimate is a bit high as my batteries cost only $7600 for the emergency backup system. Power outages are rare here but since I had the solar already it seemed silly not to take advantage of it’s capabilities in a grid outage. As for the weather here it’s great for solar, clear skies, not baking hot and with the latitude the panel angle auto dumps the snow.
I’m using manufacturer reported losses. Good to hear your getting better than expected.
i priced battery banks out a year ago, and for that size system on lipo I kept running into roughly $10-12k. The Battleborn Lifepo4 batteries run $999 for 100ah 12v. I’m guessing there are much cheaper options.
i priced battery banks out a year ago, and for that size system on lipo I kept running into roughly $10-12k. The Battleborn Lifepo4 batteries run $999 for 100ah 12v. I’m guessing there are much cheaper options.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cn...d-air-electric-car-500-miles-range/index.html
Interesting article.
Interesting article.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/amp33564444/lucid-air-517-mile-range-ev/
Was unaware of this company. Thats a good looking vehicle though. 500 miles is roughly Sacramento to northern San Diego. That would be impressive.
Was unaware of this company. Thats a good looking vehicle though. 500 miles is roughly Sacramento to northern San Diego. That would be impressive.
Bilsch
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Yes it is a very sweet looking car and a great range. Too bad they don't have something like supercharger network.
https://www.tesla.com/findus?bounds...tore,service,supercharger,destination charger
Kind of weird, that Lucid link says that it was started by a former Tesla engineer. You'd think Elon would've made him sign a non-compete.
Non-Compete's aren't enforceable in California. Nearly every EV company has recruited Tesla engineers.
California Business and Professions Code Section 16600, “every contract by which anyone is restrained from engaging in a lawful profession, trade, or business of any kind is to that extent void.”
Competition from these start ups will hopefully drive down costs and improve the cars (and range).
If this car can actually have close to a 500 mile range that would be great for apartment dwellers. They would only have to worry about charging maybe once a week. They could even make arrangements at work or some other public charging facility.
I can envision having an ev in our family. Either myself or wife as a commuter. For the foreseeable future, I will hang on to my gas guzzling suv for towing purposes and for weekend family trips and use an ev for everything else.
Btw- 0-60mph in 2.5 seconds, holy effing cow! It would take some serious self discipline not to drive like an a**hole.
If this car can actually have close to a 500 mile range that would be great for apartment dwellers. They would only have to worry about charging maybe once a week. They could even make arrangements at work or some other public charging facility.
I can envision having an ev in our family. Either myself or wife as a commuter. For the foreseeable future, I will hang on to my gas guzzling suv for towing purposes and for weekend family trips and use an ev for everything else.
Btw- 0-60mph in 2.5 seconds, holy effing cow! It would take some serious self discipline not to drive like an a**hole.
Ran across an article from a month ago about tesla filing a lawsuit against Rivian for stealing “talent and trade secrets“.
@AzOr Landcruiser isn’t going anywhere in this house. I’d be hard pressed to find a better vehicle for winter conditions in the sierras.
Imagine the off-road potential that truck has! There’s quite a few Jeep owners who have dumped a lot more money modifying their rigs than what a Rivian will cost.
Hopefully this will be a friendly amendment to the op’s original question.
For those of us who have not purchased an ev, under what conditions will you make the plunge?
For me I would want a range of at least 200-250 miles per charge, a gently used price of low 20k (maybe upper 20k for new), reliability, decent size interior ( I have Subaru Forester now and that is probably the min size for us). Awd would be the cherry on top but not necessary. I realize that the market isn't quite there yet but will soon be.
The other factor for me, which has nothing to do with the ev cars themselves, is that we have 3 vehicles, two Toyotas and a Subaru. They all have relatively low miles and will probably keep chugging along for quite a while before thinking about replacing.
For those of us who have not purchased an ev, under what conditions will you make the plunge?
For me I would want a range of at least 200-250 miles per charge, a gently used price of low 20k (maybe upper 20k for new), reliability, decent size interior ( I have Subaru Forester now and that is probably the min size for us). Awd would be the cherry on top but not necessary. I realize that the market isn't quite there yet but will soon be.
The other factor for me, which has nothing to do with the ev cars themselves, is that we have 3 vehicles, two Toyotas and a Subaru. They all have relatively low miles and will probably keep chugging along for quite a while before thinking about replacing.
Under $5K, 50 mile range.
vampirebeer
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seriously? Sarcasm is often lost...
For me, I will be in the market for a new vehicle within the next year. It would have to come in new for under $30k, and offer me the comforts I have become accustomed to (leather, moon roof, nav, apple play...) I would like 350-400 mile range. I have done zero research on this so it may actually exist.
No sarcasm. It doesn't have to be pretty, just get me to work on time. I actually tend to prefer a little ugly. People aren't as likely to make car slam on their brakes if it has a few dents already. I don't like car payments so I only buy what I can afford to pay cash for. Most I have ever paid was $3,250 so far. That car has lasted me 11 years so far so I consider it a good buy, but far from my best.
look at used Nissan Leafs. Maybe just north of 5k but the range is more than 50 miles. Won't win any beauty contests though.
I've actually been considering this Leaf but there are a lot of reports online that batteries from that year are failing - some are down to 20-30 mile range. I'm probably stuck waiting at least 5 years before the ones with better batteries are in my price range.
We have some friends that purchased a used Leaf for really cheap, I believe 3-4k. For what they use it for, they really like it. The range is about 60 miles consistently. They've had it at least 3 years and have gotten quite a bit of use out of it. I don't remember how many miles it had when they bought it but it has somewhere above 150k on it now.
Those cars get a bad rap, but they are happy with it. They bought it knowing it wasn't a Tesla and it works for their purpose.
Those cars get a bad rap, but they are happy with it. They bought it knowing it wasn't a Tesla and it works for their purpose.
for me to buy an electric car it would have to a hybrid, and i would have to be able to afford a mclaren p1 or a porsche 918 spyder hybrid. which will never happen so therefore i will never buy one. i would however purchase a bmw electric assist bicycle.
RePete
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Thought some of you might find this interesting. When we talk about range, it's at highway speeds, etc. For example, these Kona EV's went 620 miles.
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/08/19/hyundai-kona-ev-drives-1000-kilometers/
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/08/19/hyundai-kona-ev-drives-1000-kilometers/
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