The Left is doing it wrong.
We need to stop calling it the green New Deal; and call it the Patriot Power Act.
We’re not trying to go green or “Woke”. No! We’re making ’Merca energy independent! We’ll stop importing oil from the tourist countries! And be energy self sufficient!
—BRANDING!!
Patriot Power is real, and it really sucks. It’s the solar power offerings through 4Patriots, weak-ass off-brand Chinese batteries & weak, overpriced solar panels. The only good things 4Patriots offers is survival food & sun kettles.
There are plenty of people on the right who would love energy independence, but problems include cost, infrastructure, and implementation. I’m team solar panel/nuclear power, but every few years…the solar panel tech gets way better than it EVER was. So when is the right time to plunk down tens of thousands of dollars?? It’s just now starting to get really good.
Wind turbines are also getting much better. And it’s about damn time.
The biggest financial problem is energy storage solutions, spend $5-10K per battery, and have it lose 40% of its effectiveness after 5 years?? Yeah, no thanks, I’m not an idiot.
But we’re coming up with (ACTUAL, WORKING, COST-EFFECTIVE) solutions for that problem, too. Sand, gravity, and waterfall batteries.
All this to say, the technology is just now starting to get serious traction & legs under it. ¯\(°_o)/¯ It’s not ready…until it’s ready. The ‘greenest’ things we can do, right now, involve reducing our usage & upping our efficiencies (via new windows/doors, insulation). That’s the smart money.
I just heard about gravity “batteries” that involve lifting concrete blocks to store potential energy, then dropping them to generate electricity with a turbine. It’s probably the most interesting thing I’ve heard of in a while and such a clever way to store energy without needing a battery.
The math doesn’t really work out for gravity batteries. A fifteen ton block dropping 100 feet releases about a kwh of energy.
Or you could just have $150 worth of lithium batteries.
How much energy is released is not as important as the ratio of how much it takes to lift vs. lower (AKA “efficiency”)
See I’ve been skeptical about the gravity battery, too. I’m glad to see it developed, toyed with, but I like very simple ideas with very few, if any, moving parts. Gravity battery? Moving parts, cables. Would be a nightmare to work on if it broke down, possibly dangerous with the stored potential energy.
Much safer: sand battery. BTUs are expensive, you’re probably heating your water, and depending on the winter climate where you live, you are using electricity to convert to BTUs so you can heat your home/not die. I say skip the middle man!! Convert the extra energy generated from solar/wind/whatever…store it in the fucking sand as heat.
I also look at the sand battery’s simplicity, serviceability from a post-nuke/EMP/grid-down/post-apocalyptic standpoint. Should I be unfortunate enough to survive. It’s so…practical. Solar panels should only get hit <15% damage from EMP. It gets the electricity. Sent to large copper rods, acting as heating elements. Heat the sand. 🙌🏻 Sand will cost a few thousand & never degrade. Rods, cheap enough, have some spares. Those shitty LiPO batteries play out during the apocalypse, as they literally always do? You’re SOL.
first, it stores heat only. you can make it work with 1000L or so barrel of water and this gets you supply for days. second, you’d want this thing to service entire small community, because otherwise square-cube law fucks you hard. you need also all the auxiliary devices like heaters, pumps, control hardware that looks the same no matter if you make it work for your house or small village
Yes. And it works.
It’s called a Dam.
The catch is we spend 0 energy on the upstream water.
Timberborn has those, it’s a city builder game with beavers.
there are plenty issues with wear of all moving parts involved. fortunately it can be improved on in a pretty straightforward way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGGOjD_OtAM
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Energy storage is THE issue…. You want to be a billionaire? Figure that out.
Pumped hydro, is great, but there are very few places where it is feasible
there are many nifty ways to do it. i like molten silicon for example https://silbat.com
but how about shift in perspective? if you want to get in on all renewable power source, maybe it’s you who should adjust power consumption a little bit instead? fortunately most of energy used is used up for heating, and you can plug all excess energy into heater, store energy in big barrel of water for all your heating needs, and skim electrical power when available + maybe batteries as a higher priority
What makes you think they haven’t already?
in some places energy for individual customer is cheaper at night, but the real deal is with large industrial power consumers, like arc furnaces or aluminum smelting plants. these things have special arrangements that allow grid operator to regulate some % of power in return for cheaper energy, either by remote control or on schedule. in principle the same thing could work for thousands to millions of water heaters, making it work like a large, one way “battery” soaking up peaks in energy production
but do you need stored large amounts of electric energy? most of energy use is in form of heat for space heating and hot water, and for storage of that all you need is big barrel with multiple heat exchangers (coiled pipes + baffles). put in heat from solar concentrators, heat pump maybe, furnace and you’re good in all situations
problems only really begin if you want to start up welder on cold winter night
other than that, generate energy from solar + wind turbine, top up battery, dump excess in heat pump or water heater. have small petrol generator to service surge capabilities. this will be enough in majority of cases. this is also the logic national energy grids operate on, with the difference that you can’t set up pumped hydro storage in your backyard, most of the time
or try to cook dinner on your induction stove. A good hot water storage should reduce the need for electrical power storage but won’t eliminate it
The government used to invest in such things for their citizens but I guess a well-educated, fed, homed citizenry isn’t considered a good roi anymore, not to mention adequately staffed public care facilities. Yes i know i heard about what Biden and nursing homes. Funny thing is, that was the norm thirty years ago, and restaurant employees got a free meal. If they worked a shift and other things we don’t have anymore, because regulation is Satan and fu they got theirs, and the dollar went further. I keep seeing blaring ads about government assistance for solar panels but they seem sus.
Maybe see what you find online, but will you be charged for not using your energy provider?
Forgot to address the gov assist stuff, it’s legit actually, but it’s not exactly the boon normies think it is. So you buy & install solar, with evidence, you document everything & jump through all their little hoops. When you meet their requirements, you’re given a 30% or whatever ‘credit’ on your federal income taxes. Which isn’t exactly free money, but it’s better than a kick in the head & it’s rewarding you for going solar.
Now you wanna talk fucking sus??? All those third-party solar installers, namely, those that “will install for free” or “costs you nothing out of pocket 🤗”. Those guys are sus as all hell. They’re predatory, they’re not trying to help you! Only enrich themselves. Again, IIRC, sometimes they take your gov’t tax credit money somehow. And/or they charge you monthly, or they take money/power you generate via the solar panels…I don’t trust any of it; you’re inviting random-ass people onto your property & they’re installing thousands of dollars in gear you don’t technically own, and you’re pressing your property into servitude until it’s “paid off” in 10, 15, 20 years. Don’t do it. Buy it, own it, get all the benefits for yourself.
Yeah it’s bs to have to pay for feeding energy back to the grid and bs people scam people to install anything. It’s bs we still subsidize anything that’s a legit utility/need for the corporate robber barons instead of individual families who otherwise can’t afford needs.
Yesterday