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OH messes up everything
Ohio and Georgia are surprisingly similar in many categories, population, education, debt. crime, gdp, employment, income, poverty, cost of living, etc. etc.
Though until the laws recently changed in Georgia, they had way more squatted trucks, so that's.....something.
What you are describing is a financing and maintenance cost, not an input cost. I can pay $8k to have a new gas furnace installed but it won't work unless I pay the gas company for a gas line hookup and their base rate and their unit rate. If any part of the gas furnace breaks the gas company doesn't care they will not provide me with gas if I don't pay the bill even if I tell them I just spent $2k replacing a motherboard on the furnace. Similarly none of my electric utilities work unless I pay the base fixed rate and the utility unit cost. Similarly if your vehicle blows a tranny you still need to buy gas to put in it to make it move at all.
Your friends may have agreed to some kind of monitoring or operating subscription charge which is sold to consumer f installations but not necessary to solar in general.
Fundamentally if you buy solar panels and set them out in the daylight they start producing usable electricity, harnessing and deploying that electricity is another cost, but they just work without having to feed the flame.
Those 78-80 Z28s had the “Slap Shifter” (Automatics).
Gramps put a ‘70 spec LT1 in an ‘80 that was silver w/blue graphics. It was a true sleeper. T-tops…the cowl-active vent hood, the leather interior…the works. The stock motor, which I recall was teal-blue and only about 5,000 miles on it, got yanked and the Orange Beast went in…I think he ran a Holley 700-750ish carb with a primary-secondary set up that used only one pump? I remember he was surprised that I didn’t destroy the stock trans…TH400, maybe? All I know is that Slap Stick WORKED awesome.
It was a great time to be a kid.
The Shop
Luxon 4-Post Bar Mounts
$189.95 - $239.95
DeCal Works Huge Plastic Inventory of UFO and Polisport kits.
It was Kevin's Burgers (IYKYK) on Friday night's for us. Then later that night after the "car show" portion of the evening was over there was always the rest of the night making bets and chasing spots.
Canoga and Plummer, Mason and Nordhoff, Valjean, Coldwater and Saticoy, and the infamous San Fernando Road . Those were the days for sure. Then the rice rocket generation basically blew it all up.
Saturdays in Camarillo were where the big dogs went for a couple years until that became a bust. Meet at the park n ride at Las Posas, then usually head over to Del Norte before it was all industrial buildings. Cops would actually cruise by and hang out, but once the commerce side became much more 24/7 it was shut down.
so you're basically trying to live off the grid for free? I designed and installed my 1st solar system for a workshop with no power back in 2000. There's going to be startup costs no matter what term you use, and there will be ongoing costs from there since panels only best case have expected 20 yrs lifespan. Inverters are good for a few years at least- unless you scale up your system regularly. Storage batteries need replacing every couple years and they don't like cold weather or being outside... there's no free ride.
I get the trying to avoid recurring monthly fees as much as possible! Me and the wife always lived below our means and never had kids so that helped going into retirement. Our main emphasis in on lowest possible amount of recurring monthly expenses instead of more $ + debt carried over. We have a decent house with small mortgage, natural gas, Septic system, and an electric co-op. No cable TV (free ANT mostly), cheap monthly trash service flat fee, wife has 1 or 2 cheap streaming subscriptions We have cheap paid for mobile phones and never upgrade, no satellite stuff or gaming. Only average about 5k miles per year at most on our paid for vehicles. No Door Dash home deliveries and make our own coffee at home every morning instead of buying fancy coffee by the cup @ Dunkin or whatever. SS basically pays for that whole lifestyle and we don't feel like we're missing a thing. We save up for property taxes and home insurance in a dedicated account with monthly contributions from IRAs and never worry about $ when we decide to go out and have hobbies. Low-cost lifestyle is achievable, but not everybody has the discipline to make it reality.
YMMV
Had lunch the other day at Chili’s at Fallbrook Square. Grew up a coupl’a miles away(Fallbrook & Saticoy)…for a spell…a few doors down from the Webbs.
Yet…I’m gonna have to ask for some background on Kevin’s Burgers…’cause, I don’t know.
I get the feeling we need to ride some dirt bikes and be catch up on The Life Of Old Valley Kids 🤣
Agreed, man. Fantastic time to be a kid. Also the cars were so damn easy to work on back then!!
Solar energy has nothing to do with the temperature outside. Solar energy takes in photons that create energy. Even when it’s cloudy out they product energy , not at the same rate as a clear day, but they are still producing. Allot of polar regions are actually pretty clear outside just cold.
Heck yes, and Auburn CA is housing some of America’s finest including you! 😂
the slap shifter still lives! sort of...My 2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee has 5 spd auto with floor shifter in console. From a stop I can activate manual shifting by tilting shifter to 1 side in a special location. Then it's just tap tap tap shifter to that side up & down and individual gears are displayed in dashboard. It has a Sport mode which makes it a little more fun. Snow mode is nice to go manual too. My 2024 Nissan Frontier has a 9 spd console shifter with the same feature and Sport mode. Has tow/haul too so selecting gears manually for dirt roads getting to campsites it's kinda nice to select your own gear based on conditions you see ahead.
It's going to cost you to have power one way or the other, but solar is an investment like a well and septic tank. In the end it might cost a little more, a little less or basically break even but it becomes an issue of personal responsibility. That's why I think it needs a rebrand, there's a freedom to it.
Free of damage (a semi-tall order) solar panels will work past their 20 year guarantee, likely with some loss of efficiency but not too bad. Other components are underwhelming in their robustness that's for sure.
The thing is is that realistically electricity generation and battery storage will continue to be incredibly important to the world in the future for an incredible number of things, just think about how many more rechargeable battery operated things you use now compared to the 90s, they are everywhere and opened up lots of possibilities. Remember using a battery powered drill in the 90s? They sucked!
Electricity generation is essential and nuclear should be a good option, but is it a good option for the world? Is the US going to commit to developing nuclear, but then continuously attack countries that are developing their own nuclear energy programs? Nobody ever went to war because a country was building too many solar panels and batteries.
The difference between power generation/medical enrichment and weapons grade enrichment is massive.
You can generate power and be no where close to where you need to be to make a nuke.
Bingo
We've proven that it doesn't really matter
What current designs are using mirror lenses? The only one I have seen is the Ivanpah facility near Primm, NV. That has proven to be cost inefficient and they are trying to shut it down.
Near Mojave, they have installed huge amounts of solar panels in the last year or two, and I haven't seen any of them with the elevated water tanks.
What are you comparing your numbers to? Just because the turbines use a lot of concrete doesn't automatically mean they are inefficient. How long will a turbine last? How many megawatt hours will it produce in a lifetime? How does that compare to the lifetime megawatt hours of a coal plant, and the related CO2 produced?
I think it's closer to Palm Springs than NV, but that's the one I was thinking of and based my comment on.
Pit Row
Yeah that facility is on 15 not 10 on the way to Vegas.
There's a PV solar facility right next to it on the California side of the border that's a smaller footprint and puts out a little less electricity, but there's no 2 axis mirror tracking, steam plumbing and turbines, generators, or gas startup turbines to maintain. The focused solar was a cool project but not the future.
Ok, so I was incorrect about the location. Life goes on.
TM
You don’t see as many peer reviewed journals quoted in these threads as you might expect.
that takes time and effort. in today's world, attention spans seem too short to dedicate time to make a single point.
I'm with you until the last paragraph. No country including USA is running around the world attacking other countries for developing nuclear power programs. INTENT is everything here. North Korea is generally considered a malign actor in many ways but you never heard them announce they wanted to obliterate a regional neighbor or the US when they achieved Nuclear break out status and continue to develop capabilities to fire nuclear capable ICBMs. Contrast that with Iran who has been preaching down with America, down with Israel since 1979. They have killed many hundreds of Americans serving in the middle East with bombings like in Beirut barracks bombing and IEDs elsewhere and launched missile and drone attacks on Israel and are publicly committed to wiping Israel off the face of the Earth and have demonstrated with their actions they will never stop trying. It only takes them once to succeed with nukes. The risk is too great they can pull it off in near future if nobody intervenes 1st.
I'm not going to get into it too far out of respect for the forum rules but like I said before, if you watch the video the guy really discounts how much geopolitical influence energy resources hold. Producing and harnessing energy is the cornerstone of civilization. Everything gets better cheaper and easier the more energy you have, on the flip side everything gets harder more expensive and worse when energy is cut off.
Do we think that in 10, 20, 50, 100 years fossil fuels will be easier to obtain to produce the world's electricity? Do we think nuclear will be implemented around the world in that time? Do we think solar and other renewables with battery storage will be a crucial part of the world's electricity generation and implementation?
A crazy stat is that if we took the 30 million acres that is used to grow the corn that is used for ethanol (not feed or sweet corn) and put solar panels on it you could generate almost 1.5X how much electricity is used in the US.
there's no question nuclear POWER generation has to be part of the mix- and it already is in many counties (including USA), but you can't dodge the military uses (bombs) like it doesn't exist. We're the only country to use them and then only attempting to bring a faster end to WW2. Unlike Russia and North Korea we've never threatened to use them again. We know basically how many countries have the military capabilities to use them in the future. Iran unquestionably wants to develop or acquire them and will use on Israel to achieve their stated goal of wiping Israel off the face of the earth. Other middle Eastern nations like Saudi Arabia have stated they will then have to have nukes too if Iran gets them. The world will be a better place if Iran is stopped from getting even a single nuke weapon and it may not be pretty or easy but nonetheless needs to be done.
I've said from the beginning that the corn ethanol deal was a scam.... After all the energy input and CO2 emissions making the ethanol, you get a roughly 30% drop in mileage due to the energy density of the fuel vs pure gasoline with E85. Not only that, but here at least, E85 isn't 30% cheaper than E10.
Lastly, I never agreed with causing competition for acreage between food and motor fuel production. Food production will lose every time, as motor fuels offer higher value per acre, especially with the market rigged with blend percentage mandates and renewable fuels mandates.
There was an attempt for a mirror lens/solar boost facility here in Australia at Kogan Creek that has a coal fired power station, a complete and utter failure, $150M down the drain. My brother was working at the power station as one of the engineers and they all said the same thing............it aint gunna work.
Kogan Creek Solar Boost Final Report - Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA)
That said I am totally off grid where I live for more than 10 plus years, my choice as it is not feasible to get mains power where I live, and my three and a half year old solar system just shit itself last week. Lucky it is under warranty but at the moment I am running the generator (fossil fuel lol) to charge the batteries🤡
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