My local muni used to have 3 courses. They closed 1 in 2019 and have left it open to the public as a park with no maintenance going into the greens. There are 5 miles of cart paths, now trails, and it connects to an adjacent park with an additional 2 miles of trails. The golf course is barely recognizable and it has been really cool to see it slowly getting reclaimed by nature. There are a significantly larger amount of birds, small mammals, and deer seen there than even just two years ago. I rarely take pictures there but here are a couple that do a decent job at showing how little it looks like a golf course anymore. Both pictures were taken this year.
This is great, I guess it really was the economics of panels holding them back all these years. Great to see solar taking off, there are so many ways it can help, like shading parking lots (double win), apparently being great shade for some plants like hops, coving things like canals which both avoid using additional land area and reduces evaporative losses of the water, etc etc!
While cost has been coming down, efficiency has been going up. Panels now convert about 20% of the sunlight’s energy to electricity. When I was a kid it was 3-5% and it was a long slow climb. Maybe it’s just me but when I learned it had reached 20% that struck me as a lot.
Though efficiency is not really a relevant metric when the source energy is free. It has indirect impact such as the necessary area but efficiency is not a good indicator for solar overall. But yay science!
A lot of solar panels are now semitransparent too, now, meaning as you said people can grow plants below them. I love the shading cars in parking lots idea, but no one seems to have impemented that in Australia just yet.
i've no useful comment to add, but for those who don't click
Horse carcasses therefore also had to be removed from the streets. The bodies were often left to putrefy so the corpses could be more easily sawn into pieces for removal.
A real life monster who took pleasure from death of millions. Oh and the people who defend this terrorist may suffer the same fate as his victims theintercept.com/2023/…/henry-kissinger-death/
There were “few people who have had a hand in as much death and destruction, as much human suffering, in so many places around the world as Henry Kissinger,” said veteran war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody.
Not only is home installation expensive AF but solar panels themselves on a house continue to look ugly AF. Uptake is going to remain slow amid these 2 factors.
Yeah. People hate hearing that it’s ugly. But it’s ugly. Some people have houses that have the backside facing the right way. But when the panels are all upfront it looks bad imo.
Yeah. People hate hearing that it’s ugly. But it’s ugly
Very ugly, and worse than that they can only be used on a house that is not surrounded by trees. I found out that the hard way too, the solar company said they can put them up, but with all the old trees around my house I would likely only see 50% of the power of an install where there are no trees. So I was like ya no.
I have some limited electrical engineering experience and don’t like paying other people to do things that I think I can do myself. How likely do you guys think it would be that I’ll end up burning my house down if I try to DIY a small solar installation?
It’s actually not that hard. Microinverters have taken a lot of the danger out of it. Every one or two panels has an inverter, they can be individually controlled and tie together with 120 volt AC wiring, so you avoid the issue of 100+ volt DC strings that can’t be turned off. And on the physical side, there are now rack systems that install very easily and look good. Designing and installing the system isn’t hard. Just look up the documentation from Enphase or someone similar, you just need panels, micro inverters, a combiner panel, and maybe one of their computer management units. There’s other manufacturers too but the concept is the same. Installing the solar is the easy part. Getting permits is the hard part. Municipalities throw up a ton of red tape and utilities throw up even more for any sort of grid connected system. So what would be a basic concept that a technician level person could design, ends up being this complicated thing that needs engineering sign-offs and stamped plans that have to be approved by the town and the power company and inspected 18 different ways. This leads a lot of people to do off-grid systems, that is, set up your own solar panels and batteries, and run some portion of your house off at using extension cords rather than hardwired. If you’re just putting panels on the ground or on your deck and running extension cords, no need for permits.
I don’t know how anyone affords home solar. We got 2 quotes last year to put solar on our 1000sqft roof from solar installers in our area. The first was just over $100k, the second $160k! The second quote was for more than we have remaining on our mortgage - how is anybody doing this?
Keep mind that the prices in the article are FOB China (i.e. cover deliver to a ship in a port in China).
Shipping for Shenzhen (most likely port) will be between $1000 and $2000.
Duty tax for photovoltaic panels from China is 0% (I was curious so checked the TARIC database) but VAT gets added on top of it all (both the panels and the shipping) which depends on the country but will be around 20 - 25%
What I’ve seen generally (not solar panels but years ago I did look into importing LED lamps) is that doing it directly tends to result in it costing as little as 1/4 of the price but, on the other hand as a small purchaser you run certain risks in terms of quality and the manufacturer guarantees actually being possible to uphold (I’ve imported stuff were the failure rate was 10% and if you have to send stuff back, it’s going to cost you).
It’s worth considering for a big enough installation.
That said if one goes DYI, looking around in the EU for better prices is well worth it and does not carry anywhere the same risks (but also won’t save you as much) as a retail buyer for something that’s 7000€ - this kind of stuff is were the single market really makes a difference and might save you a few thousands of euros.
I would recommend most people at least have professionals install the hardware going directly into and through the roof to avoid leaks. Unless there’s nobody reputable you can hire and you are sure what you’re doing.
Home repair is often fairly simple and can be done easily with some basic online tutorials, but there’s so many people that don’t do that and think up terrible solutions off the cuff.
Metal roofs are also an option that go great with solar. There is a style of metal roof panels where you dont drill at all, you just clamp the panels on the ridges.
Roofing is its own ball of wax, but if youre handy or need a new one anyway they are a fine pair.
That’s seems ridiculous: where are you? Are you sure that’s just solar, or would it also include batteries, maybe a “solar roof”, instead of solar on the roof? As far as I know, most of the systems (in us at least) are designed for shingled roofs: do you have tiles or slate, or something?
Where I live in the northeast us, it’s typically $20-30k for solar panels on my roof, only. I don’t need batteries because I’d stay grid-tied and my roof is pretty new. That’s still ridiculously expensive and beyond any reasonable payback but state incentives make it much more reasonable. They claim 4-7 years payback but since I can’t follow their math, it goes into the bin with the rest of advertising hogwash
That’s a sneaky-ass edit just to rant at someone on the internet. They didn’t say “only 20-30k” they said it’s 20-30k for just the solar panels on the roof. They even go on to say that 20-30k is really expensive.
lol i didn’t edit my comment. If by edit you mean i “misquoted” the parent comment then i suppose you’re technically right. Let me fix it, “it’s typically $20-30k for solar panels on my roof, only.” i really don’t think it’s very different than “20-30k only”. I understand it’s still expensive… that’s kinda exactly my point. But saying something is “only” $20-30k is just pretty funny to me cause i’m a poor lol.
It’s not about having the money laying around. It’s about seeing if the cost over 25 years of electric bills is higher or lower than financing $20-30k.
If it’s more expensive to pay for 25 years of electric bills, buy the solar. If it’s more expensive to finance solar and maintain, keep paying your electric bill.
In some places and buildings, it’s cheaper to use solar. In some it’s not.
Yeah I get that. The problem is (at least around where I live) is they don’t give you 25 years to pay it off. I need to take out a loan to pay it back pretty quickly and I’m paying with interest so it changes things a little. I also can’t find any one that can do it for under like 50k which sucks. At least not yet.
I’m hoping that prices drop and the subsidies get a little more helpful or something. But right now I just can’t figure out a way to afford it. It’s just too expensive. Do you have them by any chance?
Even in that case, you are overpaying in the early years and getting free electricity for the rest of the life of the system. If you can only get a 7 year loan, you may have a higher bill for 7 years, but no bill for 18 years while electricity prices continue rising is a pretty awesome benefit.
You still weigh the balance to figure out what is economically the best option.
I don’t have them on my home because my HOA disallows them. I did, however, initiate and helped manage installation of systems on 3 separate family members’ homes and since I had already done the research and the financial benefit worked out for each of them. One was 6 years ago, one was 3 years ago, and one was 2 years ago and none of them have any complaints.
The 6 yr old system is almost paid off and has already reached its pay-off value since electricity prices keep rising… meaning, they haven’t paid off the system, but would have spent more in electricity in the 6 years they have had it if they would not have installed it.
I am currently in the process of moving out of a neighborhood with an HOA and plan on installing a system as soon as I get into my new home.
Thanks for the info! this makes me feel a bit better about swallowing the fat price point if the numbers work out. I’m hoping maaaaybe i can DIY some of it too as I’ve done decent amount of electrical work but i think hooking solar up to my home and having a standby battery and all that stuff may be out of my ability. Also, hearing about your HOA makes me so angry. We only recently got our HOA to overturn the same dumb rule in my neighborhood. So annoying…
Yeah, for us the solar installation (5kw of panels) was around US$14k. Since electricity is quite expensive and we live in a sunny country the installation paid for itself in 4 years.
Also if you happen to be on undeveloped land with no power, the electric company often charges $1200 or more per pole to get to you, so it very quickly becomes worth it to just do off grid solar.
There was one guy I saw who was 400ft from power but thepower company wanted so much that for a tiny fraction of that he was able to put in a really nice off-grid solar setup. Plus then you don't need to deal with connecting to the grid or any sort of permitting depending on where you are or how little you care about permits.
you still need the spare income to buy new land while continuing to pay mortgage/rent at your current home, and the spare time to do all the actual development
That’s pretty ridiculous imo. My system in total was around $45k including parts and installation. I got it Feb 2022. It’s 17kW system with microinverters for every panel (42 panels). No battery though.
I could have either switched to propane heating or oil heating for around $10,000 or switch to solar electric heating for around $12,000.
Not only was it fairly cheap, it also included a receptacle that sends extra energy back to the grid and I get paid for it.
The only time I have to pay for electricity is in the Winter months and that’s because the heat is on the go constantly and we don’t line dry in the winter.
The thing I like most about LEDs isn't the reduced energy usage or longer life, though those are super nice. My favorite part is now that they're running cool enough we can add some brains to the light bulbs. Motion sensors, timers, color changing add a lot of convenience and you get it in the same form factor you're used to.
My favorite part is just space. I put strips up in the corners to light the living room with no extra tables or standing lights, no need for sky lights. Less crap in the way
That's yet another thing I love about them. I decorated my kids' rooms with just some LEDs on tape and it looks awesome, and they can change the colors, and it was super cheap and easy.
I absolutely love my RGB smart bulbs. I remember when they first came out with smart lights and you not only needed the right bulb, but the smart bits were in the lamp, so you needed a special lamp too.
Being able to just buy smart bulbs and use them in anything is awesome. The ones I got can even be linked with IFTTT so I can do crazy shit like make the lights in my room react to my games.
Sadly, most of those features are bound to some shit app which tracks you and gets hacked every 2 years or so and your personal data stolen. You have to actually search to find non-smart lamps with motion sensor or color changing feature (5 of them to choose from).
Yeah, I avoid anything internet connected unless absolutely necessary. However, there's a ton of LED bulbs with neat conveniences but no internet connectivity.
Or if you are technically inclined you can buy Zigbee or Z-Wave stuff, get your own dongle for it and run Home Assistant on your home server, and do everything 100% locally and it can still be really “smart”. You can also do anything with it. But it’s definitely not for everyone.
Hopefully Thread/Matter will help with this, which is an initiative to make interoperable smart home … stuff.
Hopefully Thread/Matter will help with this, which is an initiative to make interoperable smart home … stuff.
Yeah, i’ll start with it when it happens. I have self-hosted smart stuff always considered experimental stage (meaning: lots of changing gears) and i’m not the early adopter type if i can avoid it. May be fun for some but it’s tiring to me.
There is nothing experimental about self-hosting Zigbee stuff. It’s an open protocol, so as long as the devices follow it (at least somewhat correctly) you can work with it.
And the actual “hard work” has already been done by others - Zigbee2MQTT, for example, supports over 3000 devices, so the ground work of having device definitions with easy use has already been done. What Matter aims to do is to provide standards for devices so that they all have some minimal basic functionality, expose the same fields in the same way, etc. so you don’t need a hand-maintained library like that. There isn’t even really a reason to be skeptical; considering all this stuff already works well enough, it can only get better.
It can definitely be hard or tiring, but you wouldn’t be an early adopter. It’s like saying that switching to Linux now (or even 15 years ago) would make you an early adopter. It wouldn’t; it already works, plenty people have done it, but that doesn’t mean it won’t get better with time or that it’s easy or for everyone.
There’s a difference in what’s made illegal and peoples demand. There’s little demand for guns in the UK since they were made largely illegal for example which is why one gun was linked to 30 odd cases when found as they’re not flooding the black market. There’s a big demand for drugs and if they’re made illegal, cigarettes.
In new zealand they do the age restriction first and in a few jears a full ban. And i think that they banned it for the jear where the people where still underage. So it is more a way to “soften” the ban
Are you kidding? We couldn’t even get these idiots to not try to kill themselves on the Covid virus. They willingly went out and got themselves on ventilators so they could eat at Applebee’s.
But you see covid was a conspiracy by the government to inject nanobots into you, while also been a virus produced by 5G towers. It’s all perfectly logical.
But it’s going to be. Until we do something to stop them, it’s absolutely going to be that way. There’s no serious view of human history that will tell you anything different.
We can’t just sit here and marvel at technology without acknowledging who controls it, who uses it, and what they’re going to use it for. Without people, AI is just a bunch of code sitting there waiting for input.
I hate things like this because I feel like they misrepresent the issue. Yes, I’m sure there’s some morons out there that think you have to kill the sheep, but that’s not what the vast majority of vegans think. Also it’s great if this person is treating their animals well but that’s absolutely not the case for the vast majority of commercial wool farms where practices like un-anaesthetised tail docking, mulesing and castration are common. And given the sheerers have quotas to make the sheep are often handled roughly and injured and when they get older and the wool quality deteriorates they’re still sent off to a slaughter house all the same.
Sure there’s some tiny farms out there that take good care of their animals and practice ethically and I’m all for it, but videos like this give a really skewed look at the problem by misrepresenting the complaints vegans have and also the practices on an industry scale.
I grew up on farms, I know what good shearing looks like. And even if every single shearer was perfect it still does nothing about the other points I made.
The protests played out exactly as most people thought they would. The large cities, who normally vote center or left, had more counter-protestors than protestors. This was not the case in smaller cities and towns, which normally vote right.
Something that I found uplifting is that even in my small town, there were counter protesters. Not more than the pro outting-trans-kids-to-their-parents-so-they-become-homeless crowd, but there was a least a group.
Ty I recently installed a firefox extension to auto clean all of them but I guess it doesn’t get quite everything, will have to double check it I guess
My first thought too, but at least it’s something. One day someone might be able to weave the mountain of evidence in support of UBI into their political campaign.
The ocean is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to the ocean.
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