Outrageous PG&E rate!

That link shows only 1 CNG station in the state. I know it is at the Vermont Gas headquarters in South Burlington and it is not public. Even if there were public ones, not sure how one is supposed to take a tank to the station to be filled. I don't imagine they are light enough to pick up and stuff in the car.

 

I have no idea what the cost of natural gas is since we don't have any. In absence of natural gas generator back-up, are battery storage of electricity for off-grid solar really feasible for a modern house that uses >1,000 kWh/mo?

 

I would say no to that question. A 7 kWh Tesla PowerWall runs about $5K. I would need more than 3 for my normal daily usage, your example would need closer to 5. And that ASSUMES you can generate that much power every day which is not true for my 6.6 kWh array a lot of days. In fact my array generated about 1 days usage total the first 3 days of this month. And it is supposed to be cloudy tomorrow

There was a radio program on yesterday asking people to call in and say what they would want the 2B (IIRC) infrastructure money spent on. My vote for some of it would be electricity storage research so we could reasonably think that solar could run a house 24x7x365.

 

I forget you live in the heat with cheap coal ($200/Ton) part of the continent.


So Nope but my home uses
30-60kwhrs a month and at your prices I have to bet regular gasoline or diesel is still cheaper than electricity off the tap, especially for heating purposes.

Too bad at home cogeneration is limited to Japan and DIY.

 

Yeah, I had a solar guy do a site analysis at our home last year, he came up with 12 kWh system for us. It is a huge up-front outlay, with still much uncertainty as to how much electricity it can generate.

Not anywhere near me. Many years ago, I entertained an idea of installing a coal burning stove in our house as the main heating source, but after doing the math, it was clear that it was not that much cost effective than oil, the current system we have now. Moreover, modern coal burning stove uses an electric motor to feed coal pellet much like a wood pellet stove. At the time, I was looking for a heat source that can operate even during a power outage. Thus the plan never took off.

Not really. We use a dual fuel generator (gas or propane) hook-up for the whole house during a power outage. It is a smaller portable unit with 7,500 peak surge watts and 6,000 rated running watts. We can't run cloth dryer or oven with this hook-up but for most other things in the house can be handled by it. During the last prolonged power outage that lasted 5 days, I was running this generator 16 hours a day with 8 hours off during the night. That comes up to be 12 gallons of gas for each day or roughly $30/day for $2.50/gal of gas. That's $900/mo. I pay way less for electricity from the grid and it's on 24 hours and we can use oven and dryer.

 

You need a different "guy". He should be able to tell you with a fair degree of certainty how much power they will generate in a typical year. My 6.6 kWh array generated 8.6 MWh in 2016, 8.0 MWh in 2017 and 7.8 last year. Now hopefully that would be due to less sun hours the last 2 years and not degradation of the panels!

BTW, mine are ground mount si I can adjust the tilt seasonally which increases the output compared to a fixed array.

 

Oh, no the guy was 100% certain about how much electricity the system can generate. It is I who is uncertain.

 

Agreed

 

...also Monty, in the 1970's we really did think we wre running out of oil.
But as the cost of oil rose, more and more oil came to be found, it turns out.

 

I didn't think we were. The planet is way to big for us to consume so much oil that we would drain the planet dry in 70 plus years of use. More was found, because they created the fear that we were running out, then they could justify a price increase. Supply and demand at its controlled best. Since the 70's, there have been millions of more cars driven on the earth world wide and luckily, we use less oil and gasoline. I believe eventually, the gas engine will be passed by the electric. Just my thoughts.

 

The higher rates are more likely due to the amount of renewable energy that they are regulated to use.

If we had any sense, we would be on all nuclear power. Alas the green movement isn't about effective and efficient energy production,.

SAMSUNG-SM-G935A ?

 

Now that we know nuclear waste can be contiuosly rotated back into use, it could be a viable way. I think the issue is how volitale the waste is. I also heard that the cost to replenish from spent rods outwayed the benefits. I could be wrong. I always felt there was some type of future for nuclear.

 

You could easily run that small motor off a UPS. My uncle in Pennsylvania ran a chip coal stove with a feeder motor for a number of years. Very efficient and controllable.

 

Now that we know? The French have been reprocessing nuclear fuel for many years. Nothing new in this technology. Jimmy Carter stopped this in the US in the 70's because one of the byproducts is plutonium.

 

Yeah, it could have. But the point was coal as the main source of energy for heating the whole house was not much cheaper than oil in our area, but it is much much cumbersome to use.

 

You bring up a great point. I know about the French. I know about Jimma. I know the technology isn't new. I am speaking in general terms to get to the main point which is that nuclear is a possiblity. Thats it. No debate on waste, what type of waste, who discovered it, when it was first used, how dangerous it is, what political policies stopped it, etc. But again, you bring up a great point. Much to be discussed.

 

Mostly, but not completely. Our current once-through policy extracts just a small fraction of the available nuclear energy, so reprocessing can get a lot more energy out of it. Each fuel cycle must put out some waste, but it could be much less than is set aside now.

I believe our current nuclear fuel waste stores will eventually become mines for future fuels.

The primary reason to abandon reprocessing was President Carter's nuclear non-proliferation policy. He didn't want anyone producing materials that could be diverted to weapons.

To fit this policy, any reprocessing must follow a path such that none of the materials at any step can be anything close to weapons-grade.

 

Watch the various TED talks on thorium reactors.

SAMSUNG-SM-G935A ?

 

Unless you use a 1950’s technology MSR Thorium which breaks down high level wastes into well you guessed it Thorium

 

With regard to the original post, would second the idea of adding more solar. You may also want to see if you can increase the efficiencies of your major "appliances".

For example, if your AC is near end-of-life, consider upgrading to a high efficiency one. We replaced our's last year at this time and it cut our AC electricity use in half. This helps with not only your total electricity use but when you need to cut back most - during the peak summer hours.

Fortunate here to be grandfathered into the PG&E E-6 TOU plan for a little while longer.

We generate a small surplus with 16 MWh/yr of solar production (2 electric vehicles, upgraded from a natural gas furnace and 16 year old AC and now cool and heat the house with 20.5 SEER/13.0 HSPF ducted air-source Heat Pump, upgraded from a natural gas water heater and use a 3.70 UEF heat pump water heater, and most recently upgraded an old single speed to a variable speed pool pump about 1/2 year ago.

Even with the minimum monthly charges, we don't owe PG&E anything at the annual true-up after the climate credits and small solar production credits.