Nick Young 
There’s a limited supply of oil. It’s very expensive and wars are fought for it.
There is endless sunlight. It’s free and no wars are fought for it.
Let’s choose solar.
Raglan Niall 
@nickofnz already did and I highly recommend it.
Electricity bill $0
Home heating bill $0 (electric)
Water heating bill $0 (electric)
Car fuel bill $0 (electric)
5* would do it again.
dandandin
Linda Rose Smit@lindarosesmit @nickofnz there's no such thing as free or free from impact except death. Everything is a trade-off unless you wish to cease to exist.
I put a lot of money and time in to the core of my setup 10 years ago, which is solar, batteries and inverter. Since then I have tweaked and improved things, most notably my batteries. Initially I was using retired ex-telecom lead-acid batteries. Now I am using a reconfigured battery from my Nissan leaf (after I upgraded the car's battery) and an ex forklift battery which I rescued from the scrap yard.
I put a lot of money and time in to the core of my setup 10 years ago, which is solar, batteries and inverter. Since then I have tweaked and improved things, most notably my batteries. Initially I was using retired ex-telecom lead-acid batteries. Now I am using a reconfigured battery from my Nissan leaf (after I upgraded the car's battery) and an ex forklift battery which I rescued from the scrap yard.
Z̈oé@Niall @lindarosesmit @nickofnz end-of-life battery reuse is a very cool project 👍 I had the same idea but I’m glad someone is actually doing it. Good luck!
@lindarosesmit true. I narrowed my consideration of impacts to material things. Sorry if that hurt you. @nickofnz
@lindarosesmit @nickofnz you enjoy your analysis-paralysis and I'll enjoy my solar, cheers :)
@Niall @nickofnz i am enjoying my re-insulated house, double glazing, solarpanels, induction cooking and heat pump. And know the costs. Now looking into batteries. Doubtfull that it will be worthwhile impactwise and financially.
But by all means enjoy your zero-sum game. And don’t forget to pat yourself on the back.
But by all means enjoy your zero-sum game. And don’t forget to pat yourself on the back.
@lindarosesmit @nickofnz that's the direct cost of my use which is a fair comparison to the direct cost of using other sources.
Purchasing/connecting to any system has costs associated with it and that's not what I'm talking about.
Operating/fuelling these systems has a 'per unit used' cost, even firewood cut by hand from your own land , in one or more of dollars, time, pollution. In my situation the 'per unit cost' is almost precisely $0.
Sebastian Müller
Tijgertje1987@nickofnz
Well technically it is not limitless but we are talking about billions of years before that becomes an issue
Well technically it is not limitless but we are talking about billions of years before that becomes an issue
Peter
MWT@nickofnz Trying my best to choose solar here. Sadly I live on the south side of a tall hill in a rented house with a whole bunch of trees uphill of me, and even with 500 watts of portable solar panels, it's questionable whether I'll have enough sunlight to fully charge the portable generators all winter. But at least I'm on the solar ladder!
Мя ��
Brad Macpherson@mo @mwt @nickofnz Likewise with wind, hydro, etc - there's value in community-scale projects to invest in replacing FF generation with harvesting energy from whichever sources are nearby. There's _something_ nearby everyone that doesn't require digging stuff up to burn it.
Digging stuff up to manufacture infrastructure is a different prospect, since that stuff can generally be reused and recycled indefinitely. The damage is far more limited than endless digging to burn.
@brad @mo @nickofnz
You're lucky to live in a country that thinks those scales of projects are important and worth funding.
Meanwhile, our country wants to build a new billion-dollar LNG terminal and make the electricity companies pay for it, which means of course that the electricity companies are making their customers pay for it. My particular electricity company touts itself as being 100% certified green, and still we have to pay for this LNG terminal. My portable solar panels are my personal form of protest.
@mwt @mo @nickofnz Me? No, no, sadly the country I live in is under the control of spivs and landlords...
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-41595715.html
jmjm
Dr. Quadragon ❌
VHG 🇪🇺🇺🇦
Richard A
Wayne Werner@nickofnz have you watched Technology Connections vid on solar?
ewhac@ketmorco @nickofnz Dude. You're going to mention that magnificent video, *and then not link to it!?*
You are being misled about renewable energy technology.
Let's learn and grow. New things are cool!Links 'n' stuff down below. Lots of links.First, the "clean version." Please pass that around.https://youtu.be/Zgxb...
spdrnl
PcXT@nickofnz you can’t buy the sun. You can’t own sun rays. Therefore you can’t sell them.
Capitalism will never genuinely go solar
Capitalism will never genuinely go solar
tracy_d_overandout
Mo@nickofnz
When we purchased 15.2kW solar, 19kWh battery and an EV, we hoped to clear the cost against savings some time before we both depart this earth. The way things are going, it'll have paid for itself long before that.
Barring accidents, of course, like climbing onto the roof to clean the panels.
I jest.
When we purchased 15.2kW solar, 19kWh battery and an EV, we hoped to clear the cost against savings some time before we both depart this earth. The way things are going, it'll have paid for itself long before that.
Barring accidents, of course, like climbing onto the roof to clean the panels.
I jest.
Dźwiedziu
Aho
skaphle@nickofnz For those who own the oil wells, oil is free too.
(If you ignore the cost of surfacing oil, but for solar apparently we're ignoring the manufacturing costs too).
Technically the energy in the oil comes from the sun too. Trees used sunlight energy to take CO2 and create carbohydrates, which eventually were pressed and condensed to oil with millions of years of geological pressure.
Oil has a very high energy density, that's what makes it so complicated to replace. And the second problem with fossil ressources is that they are not just used to burn them for energy, but they are in all the plastic and chemicals, in fertilizer and in our houses.
Not saying they shouldn't be replaced, just that it's a bit more complicated than to use the sun.
Gus Ugman
kravietz 🦇Not quite. 85% of the whole PV supply chain is controlled by one country - #China
https://www.iea.org/reports/securing-clean-energy-technology-supply-chains
Not saying PV is wrong on itself, but the current European model of “energy transformation” where all manufacturing was outsourced to a hostile country is just as suicidal as previous outsourcing of fossil fuels to Russia.
Yes, there’s definitely huge difference between fuel and generation infrastructure, except it’s not as simple as “buy once, use for decades”:
- due to very low surface power density of PV you need millions of these
- each year some of them fail, which you need to replace, and the whole economic viability depends on prices of these planned for decades in advance
- PV depend on inverters and most of the Chinese ones come with firmware backdoors that are remotely exploitable
@kravietz
solar cell is literally just thin silicon plate with wires, under glass, if you don't throw rocks on it there's no point of failure
Do you have any sources on remote exploits in inverters, or it's just speculations?
Because inverter (especially producing constant frequency AC) is such a simple device, you literally don't need any microprocessor to run it, neither connect it to network
if you don’t throw rocks on it there’s no point of failure
How about hailstorm or strong wind? There are documented cases where each of them have annihilated whole PV farms in one go.
any sources on remote exploits in inverters
Of course: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/the-gigantic-unregulated-power-plants-in-the-cloud/
That’s one reason why NIS2 was extended to energy sector, against the protests of the PV sector who of course moaned about “cost increases”.
neither connect it to network
Unfortunately, we’re living in 21st century and every PV owner wants to show off their generation on an online app 🤷
The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud - Bert Hubert's writings
Recently a Dutch hacker was able to take control of 4 million solar panel installations (FTM (Dutch), Euractiv, Victor Gevers). And this wasn’t the first time something like this has happened either (PV Magazine). As usual, huge thanks are due to the many beta readers and experts who helped improve this article with their feedback, valuable insights and knowledge! This post was machine translated (not too well) from the original Dutch version, which was also more focused on The Netherlands.
I don’t think it was a mistake on its own, it was certainly an emanation of a broader political philosophy - specifically the flavour of globalisation that also believed that change in authoritarian regimes is possible merely through international trade (aka Wandel durch Handel).
I very much hope we have learned that globalisation of trade is certainly desirable but only when certain mandatory conditions are respected:
- you only trade with partners who are actively pursuing the same moral, legal and environmental standards as you;
- you don’t allow development of dependencies on imports in strategic sectors critical for basic survival of civilisation, such as energy or medicine
@kravietz @nickofnz Changing the mindset away from competition as a driver, too, towards co-operation is really important. There's so much cool stuff we could all be doing together and to help each other, and instead we're trying to defeat the other bloke.
Stuff that, let's work together and make the most of our short times existing. There will always be bullies and arseholes, we can stop them in their tracks if we are strong individually and collectively.
FossThought@nickofnz Not just a limited supply, but a limited amount. Dinosaurs have been extinct for millions of years. There are no more to replenish. Once we burn through them, that's it.
trainguyrom@FossThought @nickofnz the oil we're burning is actually older than that. Usually dating back to the Carboniferous Period about 300MYA. So many giant trees and such an oxygen rich atmosphere but without the microbes yet to decompose the dead trees, literal tons of organic matter piled up and eventually became buried and over millions of years and is now oil and coal. There will be more oil, it just takes a few million years for the processes that produce it to do their thing. Not super relevant to your post but just I find all of that so fascinating. We're literally burning dead bugs and trees from 300MYA to drive our kids to school and commute to our offices (all concepts *we invented*) and we can invent an even better more pleasant world that's cleaner and more sustainable for us to live in!
TommyChristensen
LeonianUniverse😁@JustinMac84 @nickofnz Absolutely agreed.
Anarchic Teapot ⚧️@nickofnz Hit politicians over the head with this until they start learning from their own mistakes, which were only 4 years ago, FFS.
Until they do, the oil lobby will always have them by the balls.
Gerry McGovernNo Green Transition without Green Sacrifice Zones
https://icmagazine.org/nickel-mining-threatens-palawan-forests-and-livelihoods-despite-moratorium/
Etienne
Pozorvlak
Space Hobo@nickofnz This was what Prince meant when he named one of his bands the New Power Generation.
Deborah Rose ❌👑@nickofnz Solar is an enormous improvement on traditional sources of electricity production in terms of sustainability — especially fossil fuels.
@nickofnz This is misdirecting: even with huge quantities of low cost oil, it simply is environmentally dangerous, then we must provide alternatives, to take care of the living planet. It's plain simple, from a neutral perpective.
That said, there are economical and financiary forces at work, armies and authoritarian leaders, indolent people, everything to complicate a simple fact.