no matter how old i get, it seems i am always up to a good argument
and this one is setting up to be a real "ring tail tooter" lmao
volvo farmer, you get the rights to all concessions sales!
Bill
i don't know you from adam, and mean no disrespect. please allow me to explain my position a bit.
everything in nature has a certain system to it, and in all of nature man is the only thing that persists in trying to fight momma nature at every opportunity, or so it would seem.
long ago i had the opportunity to become an observer, a health issue precluded me of having a normal preteen through most of my teenage years... it gave me the opportunity to watch nature, and watch man.
a bird for instance seems to know just where, how big and of what his nest should be made, the variance is very small in a given species. man on the other hand lives in everything from a tar paper shack to castles of enormous proportions with a vast disparity in accoutrements.
one man decides to build on the side of a mountain shear cliff in the desert facing the afternoon sun, with all glass, and then spends vast sums of money to keep from baking in his domicile and lives with his trophy wife who never gives him a moments peace.. while a few miles away another man lives in a mud brick hut, with his fat and happy wife and 12 happy kids. most of use live somewhere between these extremes.
those of us in the middle work our lives away, to buy or build a large house, two story, 3 car garage, minivan and white shaggy dog, and when the kids leave we are left with the payments, taxes, maintenance and lots of room to mill around in. the kids come back to visit a few times a year until they start having their own kids, and then what,,, we enter retirement and face a life on a fixed income.. taxes increase, maintenance goes on, utilities go up, and at some point we find we can no longer climb the stairs...so
we close off the upstairs, and as time goes along we migrate to the core of the house, using the former dining room as our new bedroom, the single bath, the kitchen and the livingroom.... we end up living in approx 500 sq/ft of the original house.
where am i going with this?
what i am trying to get across is there are certain realities in life that once we accept them we can then plan our system around, or rather to include.
far better to plan for and/or build a small home (ok a micro home by todays standards) than be forced into it later when we can least afford to do so.
now with a small home (micro) we can fit it out with very efficient heating and cooling systems, because we aren't going to live in the mojave on the side of a cliff face with all west facing windows!
we pick out spot, site it properly, build appropriately for our use in our retirement years,, and we now know what our loads will be, what it will take to service them and how we can manage them so as to keep the peak demand as low as possible.
only after we have accepted a few realities and addressed them, can we even start to think about a single component or subsystem within our system.
this idea that we start out with batteries, one, two or a dozen banks, and worry about how to get 20 years out of them is tantamount to putting the cart way out ahead of the ox.
the idea that you can get away without a generator is in my opinion not in keeping with the reality of 99.9% of most installations. everyone i know, except you Bill accept the reality of a generator even if many cannot stand the thought of having one,, they will still have one on hand and will use it far more than they would ever expect let alone want to.
so just like every other system in nature, why would one want to fight this reality? if generators cost 100k bucks rather than 1k bucks maybe you have a point, but that is not the problem now is it?
even those that are dead set against having on around ought to have one for emergency life support use at the very least, i think all of us can agree on that level at least.
now we get down to other components or parts of the system, which usually mean batteries and inverters for most folks, and i think everyone would agree that they are a part of life and a reality for offgrid living.
the question then comes as to how do we charge them? well that is certainly the 64k dollar question now isn't it? sure we can do PV panels if we have enough sun, we can do wind or hydro if we have those resources, but.. we all can use a generator to charge the batteries!
when the creek runs low or dry, the wind isn't blowing, and the sun isn't shining, we have a problem.
now i understand you concern about diesel fuel pricing being volatile, who knows how much it will cost down the road? who says we have to burn diesel only? there are all sorts of fuels that can be used?
i will also tell you this, if fuel goes to 10bucks a gallon or more, the morality of the masses will damn sure degrade and you will wake up one morning at 70 years old , cold with no power because someone has liberated your panels from your roof during the night. now what?
oh yes, you could defend your place, blah blah blah...
let me digress a big here
about 15 years ago, just above downtown tacoma washington, there lived an old man in a 3 story victorian mansion, it had a huge stairway that wound around the brick fireplace and chimney with a landing on each floor,, the huge windows were stained and cut glass on each landing.. gorgeous place.... one night two men gained entry and stole the friggin windows right out of the frames! while the old man hid from fear of being killed.
end digression
solar panels are wonderful, however large expanses of them are a very large visual magnet, when the time comes that diesel fuel cost its weight in gold, don't worry you won't have those panels for long... and you don't have enough bullets to defend them.
a generator on the other hand? who would steal something they cannot afford to fuel? no one of course, but they are unaware that you can fuel it by other means. the generator also does not need to be out in plane sight, and it need not run during daylight hours or have an exhaust note heard over any appreciable distance.
so lets move on
we have a small place, we have a very good idea of what it is going to take to cover the loads, we can then determine the size of batteries needed to supply those loads, we also have an idea of what it will take to charge them, at least in equipment.
all that is left is how best to get the charging done?
so here again, lets quit trying to reinvent the wheel, lets assume those that build the damn things have a clue as to what it takes to get the best return on investment from them? when a manufacture states that we should get perhaps 10 years from a battery if we maintain it properly, why would we think it reasonable to expect to get appreciably more? are we fighting nature again? remember battery chemistry is controlled by the laws of nature to a large degree.
why would one think himself to be smarter than everyone else, including those that have been building batteries for 50 or more years?
i don't know Bill, me i am tired of beating my head against the wall, fighting city hall, mother nature, the laws of chemistry and physics, and have long given up on the idea that i am smarter than the likes of those that work at sandia labs.
for me it is far easier, less risky, and cheaper to accept some things as reality, and quit fighting it.
all except arguing! i don't drink coffee, drink alcohol or do illicit drugs, so i gotta get my kicks somehow.
bob g
