> Will these “guerilla solar” units that plug into a receptacle to back-feed get approved for use?
They are approved at up to 600 Watts in Germany, and that will probably get increased to 800 Watts soon. You can just plug the inverter output into an outlet. This is called "balcony power plants" here, and lots of municipalties are subsidizing it currently. You can't get net metering, but you can offset some of your load with minimal cost and paperwork.
Why no net metering? Is the output too low to bother? I get net metering is not great for various reasons, but why 'discriminate' against what kind of setup it is?
Sounds reasonable. Here in NL, everyone must get a new smart meter that has a separate counter for delivering back to the grid. IIRC, the grid company replaced it free of cost, if done before some date.
The old ones (Ferraris meter?) just ran backwards, which is attractive of course. Our new meter has a P1 port which can integrate into eg. Home Assistant
I think the only thing the market has going for it, is that everything else is worse.
Interest rates are negative or near zero, so bonds have the risk of losing value as interest rates rise, as the Fed needs to fight inflation. They also have no real upside, since interest rates are so low.
The Fed has agreed to print unlimited money to prop up businesses that basically don't exist, so having a bunch of cash is not safe, since the Fed is printing so much more of it.
So grossly overvalued stocks may be the best thing now.
Imagine how much simpler a commercial charging station is than a gas station. You already need electricity for a gas station, but you no longer need to send tanker trucks out to fill tanks and technicians to maintain all the mechanical pumps, or even the auditors who make sure that the pump is measuring gallons correctly.
It will be really easy to enable long distance travel for EV's that can DC fast charge. Charging for your home area is covered by wherever you park it.
Seems like a gas station death spiral is inevitable, once there is a solid travel network in place and ample 200 mile range EV's available.
Just to be clear, the power requirements for a supercharging station and a gas station are wildly different. The supercharging station might be putting out 75KW per car, and have a dozen cars charging at any particular point. A whole gas station might pull less than 75Kw easily.
The requirements for the kind of grid hookup you need to handle that power are wildly different. Alternatively, you can have a lower powered grid connection, and local batteries to buffer energy and lower peak power, but that is even more expensive, and only works if your charging station has low average usage.
Once built, the supercharging station might need less maintenance, but it is WAY more expensive to set one up up front. This won't stop them from proliferating, IMO, but it's still a big barrier to entry, and a nice commercial "moat" for Tesla to offer their customers.
We have worked with electric trains with over 1Mwatt or more per machine in places like subways. When a train slows down and stops, an enormous amount of electricity is recovered for another train to accelerate at the same time.
Also the requirements of aluminum factories in electricity are mind blowing.
What I mean is: We already have those electrical installations running, way bigger installations than 10 supercharging stations grouped together, for industry and transport.
I see EVs as an enormous opportunity for those technologies to become cheaper as they become mass produced. But the technology is well proven and works.
It will also accelerate the development of things like superconductors or extreme voltage continuous current for electric transportation.
The problem isn't a lack of technology, but cost. You have to get your electric utility to make substantial improvements to their delivery infrastructure. This generally involves digging up the street and laying cables, not just flicking a switch. It gets more expensive depending on how far your proposed charging station is from the nearest high voltage distribution point.
It does not take a lot of buildings to get into the 1MW range.
A 20 story apartment complex with say 400 apartments needs ~1MW. Power companies are used to rolling out these kinds of connections and large ones do it on a weekly if not daily basis.
Exactly. “More power” is a solution with commercial products available. Even a common DC fast charger is 440v, which is about the same voltage they hook up to commercial buildings.
We just need enough EVs on the road so that it becomes economical.
So all the parking lots at the train stations in my densely populated country that has proper (mostly electric) public transport system could be easily retrofitted with superchargers.
That’s an interesting thought.
Plug in stations should be like mini coffeeshops with good wifi and comfortable couches for waiting 1-2hrs with your laptop. Maybe they can sell VR game experiences to kill the time and big TVs broadcasting news/sports.
At least until we get to the point the plug-ins are everywhere, such as in every apartment building and public parking lot... but even then there will be a need for public stations.
> Charging for your home area is covered by wherever you park it.
Though if you're staying with relatives for a week, you'll be playing musical cars to make sure everyone's charged. A problem you don't really have with gas cars. It's not all upside.
I suspect it will look a lot like "you have an iPhone charger, right?" but with bigger cables. Not the end of the world, but certainly more involved then stopping at gas stations as needed.
Tesla actively cools its batteries and chose a long lasting battery chemistry. The Leaf, does not cool the battery, and the early Leaf model had a really bad chemistry.
Not sure why you got downvoted for this. Nissan and some other manufacturers seem to be cutting costs by not doing the active cooling/heating that GM and Tesla are doing, and consumers are suffering for it. I was very disappointed to see the new Leaf is still not thermally managed. Air cooled only. Probably fine for California, but in places that have deep winters and hot summers, it's a bad idea.
GM has said since the Volt was in pre-production they can't imagine why someone wouldn't actively manage the heating/cooling of a battery in an EV, because GM absolutely has to deal with Michigan winters. It's a strange "benefit" to classic Detroit car culture that they live in and take for granted at least one of the temperature extremes.
Yes, I would have seriously considered the new Leaf, since it is about $5k cheaper than the Model 3. It would effectively cost $18k in Colorado vs $23k for the Model 3.
It would be nice to have the Nissan service and manufacturing capability behind the product. But since it is still designed to degrade, I won't consider it.
Sure, but that changes the topic a fair bit. Part of the allure of MMM is telling people they can retire at age 30 to 40 with a relatively small amount of money if only they can keep their expenses under control and live frugally.
The reality is that as you get deeper into that 43 year period without pursuing your career, your marketable skills will diminish as well. Many careers don't "scale down" either. A person who was once making $50k may not be able to make $25k with half the hours. The choice in many careers is 100% or 0%. Programming is in many cases a wonderful exception, so that might be biasing folks here.
You may very well end up just getting a part-time retail or fast food job. In any area of the country where this plan is viable, the minimum wage is going to be quite low, possibly as low as $7.25/hour. You're going to find yourself working quite a few hours just for a "little bit" of supplemental income. Indeed, if you needed to cover all your expenses (but nothing more), that'd be a full-time year-round job at the minimum wage (and in fact you might have to work overtime).
Well, you said this was a dangerous plan. The biggest danger is that you have to go back to work.
If you continually only withdraw 4% of your nest egg (reducing your absolute withdrawal during market drops), then make up the difference if you need to in order to cover current expenses, then you'd be just fine.
Most people do not have a lot of good opportunities to supplement income in retirement. Yes, there's part-time retail--especially around the holidays--and, these days, there are the various gig economy jobs. I'm not sure that any of those are things I'd voluntarily do absent a pressing need for some additional money.
They are approved at up to 600 Watts in Germany, and that will probably get increased to 800 Watts soon. You can just plug the inverter output into an outlet. This is called "balcony power plants" here, and lots of municipalties are subsidizing it currently. You can't get net metering, but you can offset some of your load with minimal cost and paperwork.