If Californians don’t like the outages then they should install solar panels or whatever. (Actually, this seems like a creative way to get people to leave the state and move somewhere that’s not as hot and dry. I would never have thought of it, personally.)
Nesrie
4435
Pretty much no matter where you live, you’ll find some sort of natural disaster, tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes, floods, and some efforts to try and alleviate the results of those. CA isn’t much different; that specific utility is just trying a different tactic.
Nextdoor is a lot of fun today. The power outage is a UN/Agenda 21 conspiracy and the wind storm is being created by the Rothschilds to hide some nefarious doings over in Livermore, I think. Also, contrails figure into it somehow?
I’ll admit it’s hard to follow sometimes.
Solar panels by themselves doesn’t help because you can’t have the solar panels active without a battery in place, and batteries make the economics of solar power very bad currently. This is due to many technical reasons that isn’t just “evil power companies” (which I’ve seen people get outraged at here) but standard solar equipment requires extra equipment to run off the grid, and even if you had that equipment you’d lose power to your whole house when a cloud rolls by.
I don’t think the economics of batteries are THAT bad, but if you mean that as a part of your ‘right equipment’ argument, then the batteries store the power and you can still have the power when a ‘cloud rolls by’. Let’s not go Trumpian on this.
Even if we were to talk about PG&E using renewables (solar, wind, etc.), which they do (my whole power bill is paid through renewables), the overall problem still exists about getting the electricity to you.
— Alan
Nesrie
4439
It’s pretty unaffordable. When I got an estimate for solar panels on my house, it was something around 30k - 7k rebate, for the panels and the control. If I wanted to run them if I lost power, I needed a 10k battery in addition to that. It was… umm, well not happening.
This wind event isn’t turning out to be much, unless it just missed us or it hasn’t hit yet.
It’s not just not windy, it’s perfectly still. Usually we have some kind of breeze in the evening.
Quaro
4441
A million people for six days? Holy cow.
antlers
4442
Yes, when you have solar, it’s usually much cheaper to put in a backup generator for emergency power than to put in the battery and inverter required to run from the panels.
Nesrie
4443
Sure… but I would say the economics of batteries right now, at this moment of time, are pretty bad as in they don’t make much economical sense at all at the residential level, unless you really are going off grid, like the middle of nowhere and maybe that extra 10k or whatever would be worth it.
Generators are relatively inexpensive, but if you are talking a standby generator, the install costs can run 10x the generator.
antlers
4445
Right, and you have the same install costs for battery/solar standby power, but the generator is much cheaper than the battery.
Wtf, all Trumpain???
Batteries add $10k - $15k in addition to the existing solar setup. Most solar setups I have priced (and my friends that have gotten solar) already are looking at a 7-10 year break even point without batteries. That already is a hard investment that’s not guaranteed to increase your home value if you sell before that time (median home ownership is 7.2 years). I’ve seen from houses with solar around me that solar didn’t add value to the home price at all.
So trying to justify a ROI on solar itself isn’t straight forward for a lot of people, and batteries make the ROI even less so.
One way or another, going solar is going to affect someone’s ROI, if not the homeowner.
I don’t fancy filling in the insurance forms for these (10 in total) bullet trains in Japan after the typhoon.
They should have had the trains running since they’re faster than rain! :derp:
PG&E texted me tonight saying I may lose power they may cut my power over the next 48 hours. They didn’t do that last time.
Last time it wasn’t even windy, but, again, at least they never turned off my power.
They cut my power and it’s not even windy? I’m gonna be so pissed.
Yeah well, until someone ponies up to make PG&E equipment safer, this is our foreseeable future. Sonoma County is currently burning down.
In an hour or less, PG&E will shut down my power for the next… 24 to 96 hours. I have a portable generator with ~14 gallons of gas in canisters and another ~25 gallons in vehicles if I have to siphon.
Still. It’s going to suck enormously.
RichVR
4453
The problem is that it doesn’t seem to work. It must be incredibly frustrating to you. There are still fires. It’s a smoke and mirror cover your ass dance. I feel so bad for you guys.
