I am stuck in Alabama-Stan. Our presumed next governor is a MAGAt. We bought an EV last year (used VW id4) to get my wife something to get the kids everywhere in. I have taken her old car (a 2006 VW Jetta TDI) and am using it as my commuter car for work, 60 miles a day. It has drastically lowered our footprint, as they replaced our primary family and commuter vehicle, my old Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. My wallet appreciates the lower costs of both cars to get around, CO2 per mile is substantially less, and even having our local utility company screwing us on rates, it’s still cheaper and greener.
We are unfortunately the least solar friendly state in the US. There is no net metering, and our utility company charges you per kw capacity of your system to keep a backup in case they have to provide you with power. I have plans for that, I’m on vacation this all and hope I have time to sit down and draw up a reasonably diy solar system for us. I DESPISE our corrupt utility company and would like nothing better than to never have to give them money again.
If it makes you feel better, Pakistan’s insanely corrupt utility companies run a scam tax for every kw you provide to the grid, so you only earn like 15% of the actual power’s worth, and only after you pay an exorbitant fee to install a reversible meter.
So now everyone skips the meter and has started installing tons of batteries to completely bypass the grid lol. Like every house and even villages are wired for solar, but the crappy utility companies still do rolling blackouts to pretend there’s a shortage of supply.
Even funnier, the batteries reach ROI in only 3 years, and they still fetch good money when you go to recycle them due to the precious metal value.
That sounds really similar to our setup.
kWh rates for consumers are about 16.5 cents per kWh, but they’ll buy your excess at 3.94 cents per kWh. So 23.8% of what you pay them. Plus, the $5/kW fee for firm backup capacity I mentioned earlier.
The charlatans came out last summer and said we would start to have rolling blackouts if we didn’t all set our thermostats to 80 or 82 degrees (27.78 C), I can’t remember the exact amount, but the collective consensus was that if they’ll all set their thermostats in their boardrooms to 82, then we’d talk about it. You and I both know that wasn’t going to happen. They always talk about us having to be conservative on energy usage in the summers, but they don’t let us offset our loads with solar or anything else. And Alabama, as I’m fairly certain Pakistan probably does also, has an abundance of sunshine in the summer. And they’ve never curtailed my employer (a large manufacturing plant) or any of the local steel mills on energy consumption. And you can guarantee they won’t do the data centers either. It’s always you and I bearing the brunt of their poor decisions.
I am stuck in Alabama-Stan. Our presumed next governor is a MAGAt. We bought an EV last year (used VW id4) to get my wife something to get the kids everywhere in. I have taken her old car (a 2006 VW Jetta TDI) and am using it as my commuter car for work, 60 miles a day. It has drastically lowered our footprint, as they replaced our primary family and commuter vehicle, my old Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. My wallet appreciates the lower costs of both cars to get around, CO2 per mile is substantially less, and even having our local utility company screwing us on rates, it’s still cheaper and greener.
We are unfortunately the least solar friendly state in the US. There is no net metering, and our utility company charges you per kw capacity of your system to keep a backup in case they have to provide you with power. I have plans for that, I’m on vacation this all and hope I have time to sit down and draw up a reasonably diy solar system for us. I DESPISE our corrupt utility company and would like nothing better than to never have to give them money again.
If it makes you feel better, Pakistan’s insanely corrupt utility companies run a scam tax for every kw you provide to the grid, so you only earn like 15% of the actual power’s worth, and only after you pay an exorbitant fee to install a reversible meter.
So now everyone skips the meter and has started installing tons of batteries to completely bypass the grid lol. Like every house and even villages are wired for solar, but the crappy utility companies still do rolling blackouts to pretend there’s a shortage of supply.
Even funnier, the batteries reach ROI in only 3 years, and they still fetch good money when you go to recycle them due to the precious metal value.
That sounds really similar to our setup. kWh rates for consumers are about 16.5 cents per kWh, but they’ll buy your excess at 3.94 cents per kWh. So 23.8% of what you pay them. Plus, the $5/kW fee for firm backup capacity I mentioned earlier.
The charlatans came out last summer and said we would start to have rolling blackouts if we didn’t all set our thermostats to 80 or 82 degrees (27.78 C), I can’t remember the exact amount, but the collective consensus was that if they’ll all set their thermostats in their boardrooms to 82, then we’d talk about it. You and I both know that wasn’t going to happen. They always talk about us having to be conservative on energy usage in the summers, but they don’t let us offset our loads with solar or anything else. And Alabama, as I’m fairly certain Pakistan probably does also, has an abundance of sunshine in the summer. And they’ve never curtailed my employer (a large manufacturing plant) or any of the local steel mills on energy consumption. And you can guarantee they won’t do the data centers either. It’s always you and I bearing the brunt of their poor decisions.