The conversation around the gap between expert and popular understanding of a topic and the way that information is discussed really brought to mind two laws from the Sci-Fi/Fantasy realm: Clarke's Law says “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”; Sanderson's Second Law states "An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic". You could perhaps summarize the interaction here as "People's willingness to accept an advanced technological solution is directly proportional to how well they understand that technology" (which I will henceforth refer to as Drake's Law 🤣)The public doesn't trust new technology to solve their problems, because those technologies no longer functions at a level that they can understand it, or meaningfully distinguish it from magic.
how does that balance against your installation costs? How many years until it pays for itself? will you have to replace your battery bank before it is paid for???
@@dlradlt1 For mine, about 7 years, less as I convert my house to all electric, get an EV (no monthly gas bill, no need for gasoline and oil changes). Panels are good for at least 35 years, more if production is good enough for needs.
@@dlradlt1Well I live in one of the sunniest places in the world, near Phoenix, 300+ days of sunshine per year. Just the four hottest months of the year, the solar saves me $600 per month. (Sadly the house is poorly insulated, has a shitload of windows, & 2 ACs.) Just those four months alone would pay off the system in 20 years. Actual payback. Will probably be 6ish. And that's without batteries, which I would love, but don't have the cash squirreled away for yet.
Did you think about maybe getting a sterling engine going? It uses heat differentiation as a power source. Hook it to a turbine, and you can get passive power at night too...
@@fanOmryI mean, I have a decent sized backyard, but probably not one that could accommodate a Sterling engine of sufficient size to supply home power needs lol.
Solar panels are great, but the installers overcharge IMO. And there are many underhanded installers that take advantage of the uninformed giving the industry a bad rap.
You know what, I will totally give you that. The reason I bought my current home a couple of years ago, was because it already had 5 KW of solar on the roof. I tend to do a ton of research when I make a big purchase, and I don't trust any salesman for anything ever. Since I wanted to add to the system, I was already getting quotes from installers, and every single reputable installer I came across said that the installer the previous homeowner used, charged him DOUBLE. Which means I also was charged double for that portion, because I ended up having to pay off the balance =/
People don't realize how long it takes for new technology to become available to buy. The car was patented in 1886 but you couldn't go to the gas station until 1905. Kodak took the first digital picture in 1975 but you had to wait until 1990 to buy one. The fax machine was patented in 1843 but if you wanted one you had to wait until 1966.
Many research papers are promoted by PR depts of the funding groups/uni's which often tend to "mis interpret" the significance of the results, which is a source of the overhype which is seen, leading to frustration at the lack of progress
I remember watching another RU-vid channel and he said the Duesenberg car engine, all built in 1929, had an analog computer telling you when to check and change the fluids.
The gyroscopic effect will have little effect in stationary applications. So spin one up when the wind is blowing higher than demand and tap that energy when demand outstrips supply. Stationary installation efficiency can be improved with proper orientation of the spin axis in relation to the spin of the earth. In mobile applications, perhaps a vertical orientation of the spin axis might be best, as left and right turns could be accomplished with addition to or subtraction from the rotational inertia. Where as ones vertical acceleration and vehicle balance could be affected when ascending or descending hills. Flywheels are very cool! Thanks for attending this ted short. 🦊Riki2Tails
I use a black pipe in my wood stove looping into a hot water tank. It creates a thermal storage over night. (Im lazy and don't like restocking it at 3:00am) Also domestic hot water. Why waste energy? Hydronic towel warmers and radiators look awesome these days.
I fully agree with choosing what you DIY. For me I successfully installed a dual head Mitsubishi mini split unit without issue. I’ve learned that while I can do it, Sheetrock and painting are two things I avoid doing myself. The time required for me to do those tasks are not worth it be hiring it done. Solar on top of my 2-1/2 story roof is another one I’ll pay to install. Now I need to learn how to find and hire good contractors that will install to my high standards and allow constant micro-management. 😂
Yeah. I used to do every bit of maintenance on my cars. I've rebuilt them from the ground up. But, I'm older now, I have a full time job and other things I need to do, so I let mechanics deal with many automechanic related things. My time is better spent elsewhere.
@@jmacd8817Same. I bought electric vehicles for just that reason. Now the only vehicle maintenance I’ll do is on my college age kids’ vehicles to teach them that it’s not rocket science and they can get ahead in life faster if they’re not afraid to tackle some things like that.
In your discussion of thermal storage you talked about it as an ancient solution that has faded from the public consciousness. I think your example of a hot water heater highlights a reason why. Without very efficient insulation heat storage dissipates fairly quickly. I keep in mind the recent trend toward on demand hot water because traditional hot water heaters need frequent infusions of heat that make them inefficient.
But the insulation tech is available and affordable now. I run WH once a day, hot enough for a full days use (heat it > 125f, dilute down to about 105).
Like lizcadamey, I'm a boomer web dev. We just had a battery system installed along with a couple of smart load panels. I also paid much more than the cost of the hardware to hire an expert to do it. I also finished the configuration between the panels and the battery controller. I do small electrical work around my house, but anything major I leave to the pros.
A SEQUEL! And its better than the first! Shawn has excellent questions and comments and Matt really gets to the core of issue. I have seen exactly that and have said similar that tech is very person / household specific. Then there is all the "forgotten tech", which as "died" because of more convince, or simply from a fad that became poplar. Saw a house built in the 1950's with large fans in ceiling behind a door. During cool days and nights the windows opened and fans ran instead of much more energy intensive AC (IF the house had AC back then). These days I am seeing this coming back, or by circulating outside air in via a heat exchanger. Oh, and it blew my mind someone is actually using elevators as gravity battery! I was discussing that in a forum about a year ago! It would be SUPER easy for high rise buildings to use a small area of an elevator shaft as emergency power.
I'm gonna be that guy, so sorry in advance, but datacenter flywheels are waaaay cooler than the situation you described - also more limited. Cooler because nobody has to do anything. Industrial electrical systems can detect system voltage drop REALLY fast - sometimes in less than a whole cycle (1/60 of a second.) Critical systems like a datacenter would transfer the load to something like a flywheel almost instantly if there's a grid disruption. You might see the lights flicker for less than a second, but that's it. Nothing that matters would stop running. On the down side, the runtime of flywheels at load is pretty short. It's just enough to keep things running while primary generators spin up. The installation I'm familiar with had just a couple minutes on flywheel and had to keep prime-rated diesel generators on block heaters to target a total load transfer in 15 seconds on a multi-megawatt system, which is as cool as it is crazy 😅
Never underestimate the power of being able to throw money at a problem and have it solved. There's a lot of stuff I could totally DIY, but I don't, because my hourly rate is vastly higher than the cost of labour for the install/service/etc. Also, DIY doesn't mean you can perform the task as well as a professional with years of wisdom and experience. "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."
With regard to Change. There is a fundamental difference between introduction of the engine and the industrial age version transition to fossil free fuels. The engine was adopted by the industrialists to make money. The iPhone and Android smartphones were adopted by consumers to make life easier. I stopped carrying my laptop and a separate navigation gps with me whenever I travelled. Renewable energy does what? For whom? When engines were introduced there was no powerful opposition. Unions tried. When smartphones were introduced it blind sided the incumbents. Fossil free energy has powerful well entrenched opposition with unlimited resources to fight it.
Using a flywheel as an emergency backup power source doesn't sound very energy efficient. It's going to require a constant, albeit small, input of energy to keep it spinning at a constant speed. Then again, I have solar and a single Tesla Powerwall which most days does a full charge and discharge cycle, when fully discharged it still draws a small amount of electricity from the grid to maintain itself. If I only had the Powerwall as an emergency backup device, it too would not be an efficient backup energy source. The whole point of batteries and mechanical energy storage devices is to use them as often as practical to shift the time of day energy is consumed.
Commercial flywheel UPSes keep the flywheel suspended in a tank of helium for near-zero friction. They're basically just a huge high-precision cylinder of steel that gets spun up to tens of thousands of revolutions per minute inside a set of field coils. They're really only good for a very short time of load carrying until a generator can take over. Grid scale flywheels are typically more concerned with adding mechanical inertia to the system to help keep the frequency from crashing in response to significant disruptions.
Social impatience is likely due, at least in part, to the MASSIVE shift in our daily tech in the last 2 decades or so, combined with how most things happen so quickly, from ordering items off Amazon or Temu, to geting your food from door dash. What is often forgotten or simply missed, is that our current dtate didnt happen over night, but was the evolution and combination of several techs over several decades; the integrated circuit, to cell technology, to personal computers, to the internet to smart phones to social media and our current "app culture". It all seems to have been a massive rush, but it was decades in the making. This impatience is also REALLY evident when it comes to how Gen Z is livid that the US isn't solving the Israel/Palestinian issue immediately. Inertia, from a technological as well as social and diplomatic perspective, is a thing, and evolutionary changes are far easier and faster than revolutionary changes, and what may seem like a single revolutionary step, may actually actually be the result of many small, iterative steps over a long period of time.
