do NOT let them sleep in their car, there’s a real risk they could die if from asphyxiation. Here in Mexico there were blackouts from the record heat and there was a family who slept in their car for the ac. They unfortunately all died
That’s really sad to hear. Luckily the power wasn’t out for too long here.
Yep, there’s been a few cases of it happening at festivals like Bonnaroo, also.
Assuming they’re sleeping in the car with the AC running, my car never seems to let me keep it on recirculation for more than like 10 minutes. I noticed this while I was driving through a bunch of forest fire smoke I was trying to keep out, and I had to keep turning it back on.
Maybe that’s just a safety feature my car has, but not all cars? Or am I misunderstanding and it’s an issue with exhaust fumes? That would definitely be an issue in a garage.
For my car I have to pump the air all the way down to cold for recirculation to stay on.
You just got OP rock hard.
Not everyone can afford the installation costs.
That’s true, it’s not super cheap to install. But you might be able to get government grants to help with that, depending on where you live.
True, but I imagine the grants only cover a portion of it and it’d still end up costing the person(s) at least hundreds of dollars if not thousands.
Some persons’ budgets are that tight (mine is).
Damn if only solar was just hundreds of dollars. I’m pretty sure any sort of proper install with battery backup and automatic switching would easily be $10k+. Maybe prices have come down though.
I was speaking out of my ass regarding the price. It was just an example. I have absolutely no idea how much it would, merely that it would be a metric fuckton of money. Lol.
Who h is why social programs to aid cover the costs of the installs would be a good thing but given that the state they live in is resorting to rolling blackouts instead of investing in infrastructure, that doesn’t seem like it’ll happen.
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Battery backup likely last 2 hours on AC. Good luck with that.
Mine lasts about 8 hours with AC on constantly if there was no sun. This was during the day, so the battery was charging faster than it was discharging. If the power goes out at night, I just turn up the thermostat so the AC is only on some of the time, and it will last long enough for the sun to come back up.
What is the size of your battery pack and model of you know. Also what is the size of your AC unit? What you pay for the battery pack alone?
I have a 5kwh grid feed system on one of my houses and install solar for remote locations that power low watt towers.
I have two batteries that were 13.5kWh each. The cost was exorbitant, but I live in an area that loses power extremely often (rural), so it was worth the investment, imo. Plus, it increases the value of the house, so I’ll make it back eventually.
My solar panels provide 6kW.
My whole house with the AC running uses about 4kW. Without the AC running, my house uses about 0.5kW
So doing the math right there, I could actually run 6 hours, 45 minutes with no sun and AC full blast, so I guess I was off by a little bit. But I never run the AC full blast anyway, it always turns on and off to maintain temperature, and it runs way less at night when there’s no sun.
As I said, 99 percent are grid tied no battery. You are the one percent and I think that is an important omission on your part. Your battery pack would cost around 40,000 U$ I estimate alone. Now if you are not grid tied, your solar installation will be very inefficient and often not matching your usage/charging requirements. Thus you won’t be getting the most out of the 6kwh solar panels. Often getting very little return. If it is grid tied which provides access to store excess energy, that is the most efficient system. But if you include that battery pack and try to match best efficiency, then you need a much more complex charger/controller. Add 50 percent to that cost. I suspect your installation on nearing 100k if it is installed in such a way to take maximum advantage of the sun.
Now with the battery pack, you can utilize it to provide power at night allowing for maximum savings. But if you do this, there is no guarantee you will have any battery left for those frequent power outages you have. Thus to be reliable on battery, you must keep it at full charge at all times thus not getting any real financial returns on it. It is simply a 40,000 dollar ‘generator’ which doesn’t really make any sense both from an economical or environmental sense. The good thing is that it should last a long time if it is not discharged often. But if you operate it in daily usage, you will need to replace likely every 10 to 15 years. That is pretty expensive as well.
While simple solar panel with grid tie can be both economical and environmentally friendly, battery packs make near zero sense from a return on investment or from an environmental sense. It sounds like you are using it to protect from power failures but that means it must be at 100 percent at all times ready for power failures. And if you are doing that, just install a far cheaper generator. Not only is it far cheaper, you can have days of power failure and the environmental impact is far less then the manufacturing environmental costs of batteries.
Uh, no. My battery was nowhere near $40k. Solar + battery + installation costs wasnt even that high, and thats before the 30% rebate from the federal government. Your numbers are way, way, way off.
I am not going to lie, most of what you said makes absolutely no sense to me. Basically what happens is my solar powers my house. Any additional power that is generated goes to my batteries. If my batteries are full, excess power goes to the grid, and I get a credit that I can use later. When the sun goes down, I start drawing from my batteries. If/when my batteries hit a threshold that I set from an app on my phone (I currently have it set to 50%), my house stops using power from the batteries and pulls from the grid. In the case of a power failure, I still have 50% of my battery left to protect me from power outages, which is enough to power my house at night at regular usage for hours.
Yes, I mostly have the batteries for power failures, but 90% of our power failures are less than 20 minutes, so I don’t need it to last hours. When we do have extended outages, I just turn up my thermostat, and it will last hours.
WOW you cantell wich model and what type of solar panels he’s using. You can even predict the amount of sun his’ house is receiving and at what angle.
You must be a genius!!!
I installed 5kwh grid feed on my house and professionally have installed enough systems for communications towers to know the requirements. So ya I take it with a grain of salt when people suggest they can get any significant time from a battery backup system.
Also 99 percent of the home systems are grid tie and do not have a ‘whole house’ battery backup. Thus I am suspicious to begin when they say they get these long battery backup times and hands their AC tired in. And to make me more suspicious, nearly all grid tie systems shut completely down if the grid fails even if your in full sunlight. This is for safety reasons. A few people might have power wall type of systems but for ten thousand your only getting a few hours out of that and only on specific circuits in your house. Something that requires a bit of complexity in your electrical panel wiring.
And before you all find the 1 percent of systems that are fully backed up with battery, and they do exist, these systems to be viable have to be so overbuilt that they can cost hundred thousand dollars.
This is one of the huge overlooked advantages of electric cars, provided that the manufacturer added the feature (it’s insane that some don’t) you can straight up power your house for DAYS on the car battery.
Yeah, neither one of our electric cars will do that.
I don’t think you can power a home air conditioner for days on a teslas battery bank. It’s the most energy draining system by far.
if we assume the lowest capacity tesla model S and a beefy AC that consumes 5 kWh/h, that’s still 15 hours of non-stop balls to the wall AC usage.
Also, provided that you live close enough to a charger that is functonal, you have the ability to drive there, charge your car, and use the energy at home. That’s probably less efficient and definitely more of a hassle than just having a backup generator and some dunks of fuel, but hey it’s nice to have extra options.
5 kWh/h That’s just 5 kW :)
Yea I think that’s just the Lightning. Cool idea but I don’t see all the F150 owners switching to electric until they’re forced to, at least here in the US.
Which manufacturers do add this feature?
i don’t know, i’m not a car guy i just got this info from technology connections on youtube.
There are models from Hyundai, Kia, Nissan, Ford and Mitsubishi that can do bidirectional charging. Here’s a video by the aforementioned Technology Connections on the Hyundai Ioniq 5: A 24-hour test run of the Hyundai Ioniq 5’s Vehicle-to-Load function - Technology Connextras
Buy a spare ac and extension cord and run it in the front lawn just to mess with em!
Ok, even discounting how extremely wasteful it would be, that’s TOO cruel! 😂
Yikes…
Lol this thread. So many entitled people out there.
Okay so just to be clear.
You are in an extreme heat wave. There is no power. You see your neighbors struggling due to the heat. You have the ability to invite them over cool down. Doing so would cost virtually $0.
You instead post a meme on lemmy making fun of them.
Even if you don’t get along with them, doing something like this would be a huge way to mend fences.
LMAO alright Texas, we all believe you. We’ll send you federal aid next time your shitty power grid goes out and people start freezing to death in their homes.
So you know the state of the power of my house better than me? Want me to send the logs of my solar app that keeps track of my outages?
My power was out yesterday while it was 103°F. I’m sorry it wasn’t published on the internet.
Okay so your either lying or you laughed as your neighbors desperately attempted to escape dangerous temperatures.
Neither of those possibilities made you look good.
Oh no! People on the internet don’t think I look good! How will I ever recover!?
Not lying about the power outage. It wasn’t out long enough for anyone to actually be in danger, just slightly uncomfortable. No one was desperate, just wanted to be a little more comfortable in their cars.
You’re just being a toxic asshole that wants to find something wrong with everything, so you are making assumptions about a situation you don’t fully understand and jumping to conclusions like it’s some sort of Olympic sport.
Okay so you watched your neighbors struggle in the heat and thought it was funny.
You are a toxic asshole to people in real life.
Lmao, for a couple of minutes. They were fine. I promise. No one was dying in the streets or anything.
You are a toxic asshole to people in real life.
The irony is delicious.
Not really. This is the Internet. You’re a dick to your actual neighbors. Who you live next to. You you saw in person and laughed about their misfortune. In real life.
You realize people on the internet are also people that live next door to you and me too, right?
While the Texas grid does have issues related heat waves, it’s not alone in that regard. Basically every southwestern state does, including California.
There are stark differences between 49 other states and Texas.
- Texas power grid has been systematically gutted
- regulation and inspections are defunded, as Texas refuses the inspections required to join the nations power exchange as a peer.
And the big one
- now they’re not exchanging power, they have to buy from their rich constituents, at a premium, and they gut the bank accounts of your tax money
They’re set up for failure and occasionally they succeed.
Ask them how they feel about climate change first!
“Hey neighbor. I’ll totally help you out during this heat wave, but only if you have the same political opinions as me. You’d better make that apparent quick, because your gas tank will only last for so long”.
On some level you have to realize that’s a toxic attitude, right?
If you actually believe in trying to help combat climate change, you’d get them out of their car just so they’d stop burning gasoline.
As soon as there’s a good Lemmy mobile client I’m gonna hop of the main instances. It already has most of the toxic aspects of reddit.
You’re the one being toxic here. You know that, right?
They think climate change is a political topic, so…probably not.
Have you tried Jerboa? I’m using it right now and it’s excellent.
Well at some point we need to stop letting people believe that climate change denial is a reasonable stance to have. Letting folks stew in the consequences of their choices is effective.
Being friendly is far more effective than trying to punish people to make them agree with you. Especially when there’s no immediate and obvious consequence of their individual actions.
Of course you’re right. It’s best to continue being friendly until they’d literally die outside and wouldn’t need persuading.
Climate change is not a “political opinion” it is a fact
So what you’re saying is that it’s okay to let your neighbors struggle during a heatwave if they aren’t well educated?
No that is not what I’m saying, I’m just saying cliychange is a fact not an opinion
So I this entire thing, like everything these days, is made up to push a narrative.
But you’re the one who brought up Texas and laid out the narrative that their isolated grid doesn’t have any issues that the rest of the country doesn’t have as well. Who’s pushing the narrative here?
I assumed it’s the one who used the phrase “these days” regarding a social issue like it’s unique to now.
You might try to not be an asshole to them and invite them in. You’d probably be able to get them more on biased with solar. But then you’d have to give up the opportunity to be a snarky troll.
Soon as I see the ‘literally’ I usually predict how it’s going to go.
It’s also nice to be on good terms with your neighbors, you never know when you could use their help or what they might offer you I’m the future. My neighbors wife asked for a cup of flour and we gave her an extra bag. Next day my wife is outside and they hand her an ounce of weed… what a trade
I had to stop smoking weed for medical brain damage reasons, and ended up gifting 4 grams of concentrate and all my glassware to a cool neighbor.
Multiple hundred dollar bongs and a $300 Opal set in a dab rig.
Back on opiates for pain, but he was a cool kilt wearing bastard.
I would not want any of my neighbors up in my house.
I want solar too, but I can’t afford it
Me living in a state that doesn’t have rolling blackouts…
Me living where it’s 60-75 all year.
What country is that?
California central coast
Portugal central coast is similar.
Damn, I didn’t realize it has gotten that bad in Portugal, that’s awful.
Bad? What do you mean?
I see now I misunderstood. I though they meant over 60 blackouts all year.
lol room temp = awful
Ok 🤷
Illinois central coast.
Humid god-forsaken hellscape July-Aug.
With that kind of consistency without being consistently super hot, I’d say it’s somewhere close to the equator but high elevation.
I’d mention a couple examples I know of, but I wouldn’t want to risk semi-doxxing them by narrowing it down further 😄
They use farenheit so I imagine that narrows it down quite a bit
True, unless they converted from Celsius for the convenience of Americans and inhabitants of certain Caribbean islands 🤷
Non-americans don’t care about the convenience for americans
Not true lol, I often convert stuff for that exact reason
And Myanmar
California central coast. Daytime highs. Fahrenheit.
For now.
The us has 3 energy grids: east coast, west coast, and texas. As long as don’t live in Texas, you shouldn’t have issues with electricity.
It’s not that simple, there are local grids that can only take so much. California had rolling blackouts as recent as 2020 https://abcn.ws/3er0Y8i
And completely unrelated, but due to the wildfires and the lawsuits against the power companies, they have also started cutting power when the lines are in areas of high wind. https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/psps/
Fuck you OP
“hyah hyah hyah. Molly my dear, come look at the poors with me! What a riot, look at how hot they are!”
If Gilligan’s island were real, they’d have eaten Thurston Howell first. Just sayin’.
Tell me about your experience? I’ve been interested, but it’s admittedly daunting.
I’ve had solar panels and a battery for almost four years. Other than cleaning the panel surfaces once or twice a year they have been fully maintenance free.
What do you want to know? Like my experience when shopping for panels? Or my experience having them on the house?
What’s it like to maintain them?
I’ve had mine for right at a year. Haven’t done anything, I’ll consider cleaning if I see efficiency taper off
I have only had them for a couple of months, so I haven’t got that far yet. From some research I have done, I should hose them off once a year. The installer told me that I could probably just hose them off from the ground level, but I’ll probably hop up on the roof and hose them off. I’ll probably do it next spring for the first time.
Wouldn’t rain rinse them at least once a year? Unless you live in the desert of course.
Be aware to not hose them off when they have been exposed to sunlight for a certain amount of time. Solar panels become extremely hot and cold water will crack the glass panel.
Yup, first thing I n the morning is usually best.
Water your panels like your garden
Never lived anywhere that can get cold water from a hose tap when it was hot outside. Rain water is always colder
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Thanks for the reminder! The installer also warned me about this.
I’ve had panels for 3 years now. There’s no maintenance needed. Performance is monitored via app and the company that installed them for me will contact me if something is wrong with them for the next 25 years.
I want to know if all your neighbors hate you for making fun of them instead of just inviting them inside.
