[HN Gopher] Facing sky-high connection fees, rural Ontarians go ...
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Facing sky-high connection fees, rural Ontarians go off the grid
Author : dgudkov
Score : 289 points
Date : 2021-10-26 08:56 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbc.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbc.ca)
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| You also must add in the cost of propane for heating the house
| during the winter for 3 - 5 months. (and a big tank)
|
| If I was off grid, in a rural area where the winters can get
| severe, I would want a big diesel generator as a backup.
|
| A lot of things can happen during a proper winter: roads close,
| heavy snow, supplies can get hard to get some short periods, you
| can get cold front that bring the temperature down below 20C.
|
| One of the things that sucks about diesel generators are the
| noise, and the pollution and the maintenance. You also have to
| run it for a while every now and again and make sure you test
| everything regularly.
|
| He could heat the house electrically with power off the generator
| and that would integrate nicely with solar and wind power.
|
| Oh you can get propane generators as well, I was not familiar
| with that. That would be more convenient since he already has a
| propane tank. Just build a bigger one.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| What they don't tell us in the article is WHY it is $80k. Without
| knowing WHY, it's very hard to judge anything about it. Maybe
| it's price gouging. Maybe there are technical issues that make it
| very difficult. Maybe there are weird regulations that come into
| play. Maybe there are strange incentive structures. Maybe $80k is
| actually a loss. Who knows?
| leoedin wrote:
| Unfortunately this article (like most news articles seem to)
| mixes up kW and kWh, so we don't actually know how big his off
| grid solar system is. I'm guessing 8 kW (or 8 kWh per hour,
| without capacity factor taken into account).
|
| It's a pretty compelling option - spend less than the connection
| fee to get free electricity. The biggest problem is that you have
| to size your system for cloudiest days in the dead of winter -
| which means massive batteries and lots of extra panels. It would
| be interesting to see a full cost breakdown for a realistic use
| case over 4 or 5 years, including the cost of maintenance.
|
| I imagine you could throw a $1000 generator into the mix to cover
| the really bad days, but then that's an added maintenance burden.
| boringg wrote:
| >> It's a pretty compelling option - spend less than the
| connection fee to get free electricity. The biggest problem is
| that you have to size your system for cloudiest days in the
| dead of winter - which means massive batteries and lots of
| extra panels.
|
| Or alternatively have a manageable demand side so you can
| minimize your demand on bad weather days. Definitely 8KW system
| - everyone messes up kW and kWh.
| giantg2 wrote:
| If you're able to run central air plus a bunch of other stuff
| at the same time, then I would think your assumption of 8kW is
| right. If capacity was only 8kWh, then they could only run all
| this stuff for maybe 1-2 hours a day. That seems like an absurd
| outcome, and unlikely.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Why is that unlikely? You don't need all that much power if
| you're frugal and the first thing any person building a
| renewables installation is going to buy is a kill-a-watt, the
| next thing will be an energy efficient fridge. It's amazing
| how much you can shave off your electricity usage if you
| start monitoring where it goes.
|
| Converting electricity to heat is a bit like turning the best
| steak into hamburger, wasteful and costly. Electric heat is
| pretty much limited to the United States, in most other
| countries power is way too expensive to be used for heating.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| >Converting electricity to heat is a bit like turning the
| best steak into hamburger, wasteful and costly. Electric
| heat is pretty much limited to the United States, in most
| other countries power is way too expensive to be used for
| heating.
|
| This is so wrong it is almost funny. Electricity is an
| incredibly efficient way to generate heat. A heat pump - to
| name just one device - can move much more heat energy than
| electrical energy put in. Even resistive heaters are more
| efficient than burning any fuel for heat.
| leoedin wrote:
| Resistive heaters are only highly efficient if you draw
| the boundaries of your system very tightly. If you take
| into account the losses during generation, it's a
| terrible picture. It's far, far more efficient to burn
| the fuel directly to generate heat than it is to burn the
| fuel to generate electricity to generate heat. The grid
| is perhaps 40% efficient at converting fuel to
| electricity.
|
| It's harder to be so absolute when talking about
| resistive heat and renewable energy, but it's almost
| certainly a very poor use of your electricity. You could
| either drive a heat pump (and get 4x the heat per dollar
| of renewable investment) or you could spend far less
| money to build a solar hot water system (or, if you have
| the renewable forestry, a wood burner). Resistive heat
| really only makes sense if you have excess renewable
| energy and literally nothing else you could use it for.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| in the specific context of living off-grid, heat pumps
| make great sense because the amount of electrical energy
| put in is a fraction of the amount of heat energy moved.
| This is the crux of the cost argument - electricity is
| expensive whether from the grid or from your own sources.
| The original point was that electricity is wasteful for
| heating. It is not.
|
| Your numbers for grid efficiency are also way off. Hydro
| and nuclear to name just two, are much more efficient
| than that and 40% efficiency numbers are in the realm of
| possibility where the grid is primarily coal-based. Which
| most of north america and europe are not.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think we also have to talk about whether these
| efficiency numbers include actual grid efficiency or just
| the generation portion.
| jacquesm wrote:
| A heatpump does not convert electrical energy into heat.
| You are failing the first rule of HN which is to treat
| that which you've read with the principle of charity: to
| interpret it according to the most favorable
| interpretation rather than to jump on it with the worst
| possible interpretation. But since you've done this: heat
| pumps as you already mentioned move heat, they don't
| convert and I clearly wrote _converting_ electricity to
| heat, not 'use energy to move heat'.
|
| Resistive heaters are terrible compared to other sources
| of heat when you've done proper cost accounting, burning
| fuel for heat can work depending on where you are, an
| outdoor woodstove with a water based central heat system
| augmented with in ground loops and a heat pump can serve
| both to heat and to cool at will.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| most resistive heaters will convert 100% of electrical
| energy into heat. No fuel can reach that number. How can
| you - in good faith - make the claim that electrical
| heating is wasteful or expensive, even accounting for
| edge cases?
|
| If anything, it is the opposite when compared to burning
| any fuel for heating, particularly if you are living off-
| grid in a rural environment. If one considers the
| situation in the original link - exorbitant utility fees
| - it makes absolute economic sense to run heating and
| cooling off electricity, especially if you generate that
| electricity.
| ska wrote:
| > make the claim that electrical heating is wasteful or
| expensive, even accounting for edge cases?
|
| I suspect you two are talking past each other. In
| many/most parts of the world, the electricity you get at
| your house was generated by burning a fuel at a remote
| (to you) plant. In that case, you would have been far
| better off burning the same fuel at your house to
| generate the heat (assuming you can). Both the generation
| and transfer have significant losses.
|
| It's also true that if you generate it from some other
| source the math changes.
| jacquesm wrote:
| If you generate it using solar or wind power locally the
| math indeed changes: those are very expensive KWhs so you
| tend to be far more careful with them. Running resistive
| heat off a local solar installation is madness, I have
| never seen this done in practice, except for cooking and
| even then it is an expensive affair. The first thing you
| learn when you go off-grid is that every little bit
| counts. Electric heat is right out.
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| It's unlikely because central AC units (they mention having
| one) tend to be energy hogs.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Central AC is pretty much incompatible with having an
| off-grid system. But there are good alternatives such as
| heatpumps and running your central heat (water based) in
| reverse to cool.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Well the article says their system runs central AC.
| That's why I'm thinking that it would use the bulk of the
| electricity.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, that's why they have an oversized system,
| essentially they are putting in roughly twice the amount
| of power they need so that they can convert sunlight into
| electricity to power an AC that then moves about half of
| that in heat. It would be far more efficient to use a
| heatpump.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by using a heat pump for AC.
| AC is effectively a heat pump. Colloquially, we call HVAC
| systems that use a heat pump to heat the house as a "heat
| pump", while a heat pump used to cool the house (heat the
| outside) is called air conditioning. Many AC systems are
| also configured to heat the house (heat pump can work in
| either direction).
|
| Why do you say it's an oversized system? It seems like it
| is sized appropriately give the stuff it is required to
| run.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Fair enough, every AC system is a heat pump. But most of
| them are quite inefficient and require a lot of power to
| operate, though the last decade or two there have been
| some major improvements on this front.
|
| The kind of heatpump that I have in mind will heat and
| cool depending on the season and uses in-ground loops
| with a fluid running through them.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Ah, so a heat pump designed to use geothermal or marine
| heat transfer. Yeah, those are more efficient. It's too
| bad they aren't more common, probably due to price,
| experienced installers, and smaller market (certain
| install requirements make urban areas less of a
| candidate). I'd love to have one.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I've been looking into the DIY options in this realm, I
| may do a project next summer.
| Filligree wrote:
| > If capacity was only 8kWh, then they could only run all
| this stuff for maybe 1-2 hours a day.
|
| I think the correct reading is they'd be able to run it for
| 1-2 hours, once. Presumably it's all powered off a bank of AA
| batteries. ;-)
| jacquesm wrote:
| He's using some pretty heavy duty prismatic Lithium Ion
| cells.
| Filligree wrote:
| Then presumably it's 8 kW. I wonder what the base rating
| of the solar panels is; it might be 60-70 kW.
|
| (If it's just the panels shown in the photo, then those
| are probably 8kW on a sunny day.)
| jacquesm wrote:
| 26 panels at 300 W / panel is indeed about 7.8KW with
| some leeway if it is cold they will do a bit better and
| when it's warm they'll do a bit worse. Rural Canada is
| quite far North, so your sunlight will not quite reach
| the 1KW/square meter that you can expect elsewhere due to
| the longer path the light needs to take through the
| atmosphere which causes some attenuation.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Capacity factor of a renewables system is usually around 20 to
| 30%.
| Filligree wrote:
| Better throw in a backup generator for the backup generator, as
| well. They're mechanical devices, and fail a lot.
|
| Solar panels typically produce 10-15% of their normal power if
| it's cloudy. Adding a wind turbine or two can do a lot to make
| up for that, but then there's winter...
|
| I'd very much like to see what their thoughts are in a year.
| MaKey wrote:
| Adding a small wind turbine is usually not worth it. They
| need a lot of wind to produce any meaningful energy output
| while costing a few thousand $. So unless you go really big,
| you'd be better off adding more solar panels.
| stefan_ wrote:
| > Combined, the system produces eight kilowatt hours
|
| Can they start educating journalists about power and energy, in
| university or whatever internships they do? It is really not that
| difficult.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Could industry quit using power times time as a unit of energy
| and just use joules?
| koheripbal wrote:
| This would only make sense if all devices started listing
| power consumption in joules per hour, instead of watts.
| upofadown wrote:
| Watts are joules per second. So power consumption would
| still be in Watts. A kWh, or in other words a 1000 Watts
| for an hour, is 1000 * 60 * 60 = 3600000 joules. So in
| practice people would use Mj (Megajoules) and save a
| syllable.
| bregma wrote:
| kWH is a more consumer-friendly unit since it's easier to
| calculate that a 100 Watt light bulb run for 10 hours
| consumes 1 kWH and you would just multiply by the cents-per-
| kilowatt-hour billing rate to find out how much it costs. If
| you were billed by the joule you'd need to divide by 3.6
| times the rate. Or is it multiply by 3.6 divided by the rate?
| Do you subtract the 32 before or after?
| upofadown wrote:
| Any consumer that knows that "k" means 1000 is going to
| know how to figure out how many seconds there are in an
| hour/day/year. There is endless confusion caused by the
| double use of time in kWh that this article is an example
| of. There is little doubt that using the base unit would be
| better.
| chithanh wrote:
| What? If you were unaware, 1 J = 1 Ws
|
| Besides, considering the food industry in most countries will
| not even get rid of kcal where there exist zero reason to use
| that unit, I don't think so.
| ginko wrote:
| >1 J = 1 Ws
|
| Yes, because watts are defined joules per second. Joule is
| the SI base unit.
| chithanh wrote:
| No, Joule is not among the SI base units.
| ako wrote:
| Just because you teach it, doesn't mean people remember or
| understand it. I had Latin in highschool, but wouldn't be able
| to translate a single Latin sentence today...
| joeberon wrote:
| Indeed, and even educated people might not grasp it. I'm a
| doctor in quantum physics and honestly I find electronics
| almost always impossible to understand.
| Ekaros wrote:
| If Engineers are teached humanities. Why not humanities are
| teached STEM... Like basics of math, physics, chemistry,
| engineering and son on... Would in general make our society
| better if everyone understood these things.
| jerf wrote:
| People _are_ taught the basics of STEM. At least here in the
| US.
|
| It just doesn't stick.
| tremon wrote:
| Are you suggesting engineers aren't taught the basics of
| reading, writing, perspective, and so on?
| dbetteridge wrote:
| 'taught', you can have 'teach' or 'teaches' but not 'teached'
|
| And in theory the basics of those should be covered in high-
| school.
| jessriedel wrote:
| Based on personal experience, I don't think it's a symmetric
| deficit. Just as an example: at lots (most?) colleges, you
| _must_ take (or test out of) a foreign language to graduate,
| but it 's fine to not take calculus.
|
| And in any case, a journalist covering a technical subject
| should have a basic understanding of units. It's really
| elementary stuff.
| mywittyname wrote:
| MIT had a course called Physics for Future Presidents. Which
| is basically a primer of the major topics in science.
| ketzu wrote:
| Aren't those basic high school topics?
| Ekaros wrote:
| They should be. Maybe just need to apply standards to high
| schools and not allow graduation without certain sufficient
| baseline... Which currently clearly is too low in many
| countries.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Last time I interviewed someone in the US, they actually did
| do that in the first terms in the IT Bachelor because
| apparently there is no common standard across US high
| schools.
|
| But given how many of the investors in the UK actually study
| humanities at Oxford I'm not sure what you're trying to
| accomplish there. Unless you really believe that studying
| humanities somehow makes you a more moral human being that
| then doesn't go on to destroy the world, which clearly isn't
| the case.
|
| And for reference Boris Johnson studied classics at Oxford,
| fucked a dead pig as part of a fraternity initiation ceremony
| and is now doing his best to dismantle public healthcare in
| the UK. So I don't think the "make our society better"
| statement holds any value.
|
| EDIT: comment below is right, it was David Cameron, not Boris
| Johnson. And he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
| So while the last paragraph is half correct and half mixed in
| with Boris Johnsons history, both of them have been working
| hard on selling off the NHS. Boris also hasn't started as
| many wars. So, I guess Boris is better on a relative scale?
| thedailymail wrote:
| Nitpicking, but wasn't it David Cameron who fucked a dead
| pig?
| MadeThisToReply wrote:
| What wars did David Cameron start? You sure you're not
| thinking of Tony Blair?
|
| Incidentally, Cameron is far from the only UK politician to
| have studied PPE at Oxford. An alarmingly high number of
| our leaders are products of that one degree program at one
| university [0] - which suggests that this program deserves
| a lot more public scrutiny than it gets, given the shoddy
| results it seems to produce!
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/feb/23/ppe-
| oxford...
| notafraudster wrote:
| Humanities degrees almost always require both 1-2 mathematics
| courses and 1-2 science courses, and they're almost always
| fulfilled with complementary electives e.g. "rocks for jocks"
| type material, the same way engineers fulfill their
| complementary electives with blowoff courses that cater to
| their preferences.
| joeberon wrote:
| Engineers are not taught humanities here in the UK, and I'm
| sure that's also true in many other countries
| ericd wrote:
| MIT requires it of everyone, but Economics fulfills the
| requirement (and it's a popular route, since you get a bit
| of basic algebra homework instead of paper writing).
| ghaff wrote:
| Depends what you mean by "taught humanities" I guess.
|
| For my engineering degree in the US, I certainly took non-
| engineering/science courses as part of a distribution
| requirement and took various other courses and did various
| other activities as well. Among other things,
| communications has been a key part of my career track.
| joeberon wrote:
| During an engineering degree in the UK you will not be
| required (or even usually _have the possibility_ ) of
| doing a non-engineering module
| randac wrote:
| I think the only module I took that was close to this,
| for CompSci in UK, was on technical writing.
| ben_w wrote:
| Literally zero of my degree modules (BEng Software
| Engineering, Aberystwyth) were non-software engineering.
|
| But the UK does all of education differently to the USA,
| or at least it did when I went thought it: mandatory up
| to the age of 16 where you got approximately a dozen
| GCSEs, then two years doing A-levels (3, 3.5, or 4), then
| you go up to university. The only mandatory requirement
| to do humanities was in the GCSEs.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| Probably because most are too dumb to pass it.
|
| Before you down-vote: ask what their high school STEM grades
| are?
| aspaceman wrote:
| They have to take the same elementary physics class we all took
| in high school. It's just too "hard" to actually care. They
| remember work and energy are things, but it's just not worth
| caring about to them.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Lack of understanding by journalists is pretty common across
| many topics. Many times they oversimplify, don't show the whole
| picture, and get things wrong. I see it quite often in a
| variety of stories.
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| And when you _don 't_ see journalistic incompetence, you
| _may_ be suffering from Gell-Mann Amnesia, as Michael
| Crichton spoke about:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20070714204136/http://www.michae.
| ..
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| """
|
| Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as
| follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some
| subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine,
| show business. You read the article and see the journalist
| has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the
| issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents
| the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these
| the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
|
| In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the
| multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to
| national or international affairs, and read with renewed
| interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more
| accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the
| story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you
| know.
|
| That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does
| not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if
| somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon
| discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal
| doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means
| untruthful in one part, untruthful in all.
|
| But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence
| that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of
| the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The
| only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.
|
| """
| adriand wrote:
| I was reading a book about nutrition recently and the author
| was relating the remarkable health benefits of herbs, even
| dried ones. She went on to state that were you to eat an entire
| cup of dried basil - not that you would - you'd get 2,113 grams
| of calcium. Yes that's right, 2 kg of minerals in a fluffy cup
| of dried basil flakes! A miracle of nutrition indeed.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| By my math it should be roughly 1.6 grams of calcium in a cup
| of dried basil. I was curious for some reason and had to
| check
| jacquesm wrote:
| Assuming < 2 KG of basil went in I'm pretty curious about the
| transmutation effect here. Surely some scientist has looked
| into this.
| andreareina wrote:
| Reminds me of a factoid that claimed spinach was 80% protein
| or some absurd number like that. Turned out that 80% of the
| calories you get from spinach come from protein, but of
| course 80% of a tiny number remains a tiny number.
| GordonS wrote:
| I'm getting off topic here, but I just checked and 1 US cup
| of basil is around 20 grams - I regularly make a pesto that
| has around 25g per serving!
|
| Mind, that's for fresh basil and you mentioned dried, I don't
| know how to convert those weights.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > you'd get 2,113 grams of calcium
|
| Perhaps the author was using the comma as the decimal
| separator? I know that the Norwegians do this.
| MadeThisToReply wrote:
| Most countries/languages use a comma as the decimal
| separator - it's the English-speaking world that's unusual
| for using a dot.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#/media/File
| :...
| anonporridge wrote:
| The map you linked suggests that dots are standard in
| both China and India as well, which probably means that
| the majority of humans and economic energy use dots not
| commas.
| anonporridge wrote:
| I assume any translation service would account for this.
|
| As far as I know, commas as the decimal separator aren't
| used anywhere in the English world. Although, perhaps the
| author was not a native speaker, but still personally
| writing in English and made the mistake.
| seanw444 wrote:
| 2,113 grams seems totally reasonable.
| revax wrote:
| With too many significant digits though.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I wouldn't expect a non-engineering journalist to
| understand or care about sig figs, nor does it matter
| mywittyname wrote:
| That's a lot of sig-figs.
| tomohawk wrote:
| I've had a grid tied solar system for 15+ years. With the
| enormous tax subsidies back then, it's broken even. There's about
| a 1.5% decrease per year in production. I'll have to replace the
| whole thing sometime in the next 5 years.
|
| This article paints a very rosy picture of what to expect. In a
| non-grid-tied system, you have to deal with batteries and a bunch
| of other issues. This is not cheap. And it is a recurring
| maintenance cost. Are you going to do that maintenance every few
| months yourself, or pay someone to do it?
| londons_explore wrote:
| For anyone doing this, please bear in mind that if you want to be
| able to just use anything electrical anytime, you'll need a
| _very_ expensive setup.
|
| Most people off grid need to be keeping a constant eye on their
| battery levels of charge, and do things like only using the
| washing machine on sunny days.
|
| Certain appliances like tumble driers, electric showers, and fan
| heaters, you pretty much can't have.
| mrjangles wrote:
| You just need a diesel engine fill the gaps.
| m0ngr31 wrote:
| I'm off grid and have all of those things. I don't worry about
| battery level because I have an appropriately sized system.
| jacquesm wrote:
| True, you can't waste your power. But it isn't all that
| expensive (the prices of solar have come down tremendously) and
| there are now good and relatively inexpensive solutions for
| storage. It's still more work than a grid hookup, but it is
| absolutely doable if you are willing to adjust your lifestyle
| just a bit. A woodstove with a heat exchanger and you'll have
| all the domestic hot water that you'll ever need. Fan heaters
| are ridiculously wasteful and shouldn't be used (in general:
| electric heat should not be used).
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| It's good to be aware of energy consumption. It requires
| planning and a concern for efficiency.
|
| These habits seem difficult to inject into popular thinking
| until there is economic pressure. Human populations have
| consumed entire forests to burn wood just to cook and to stay
| warm. Electricity is a superior solution, but the same
| primitive, wasteful habits remain.
|
| In other words, for all the people "on the grid", the challenge
| is to unlearn wasteful consumer habits and conditioning. Their
| homes are full of devices and AC adaptors that draw power when
| idle. The combustion engine itself is very poor in efficiency,
| but the high energy density of petrol masks the cost.
|
| People prefer not having to think about the energy cost and
| environmental cost. A challenge in the area of EV adoption, for
| example, is that people expect not to need to concern
| themselves with expenditure. Those who drive an EV need to be
| aware of the energy cost of driving (e.g. heating, cooling,
| tire inflation, load) and of the advantage of combining trips.
|
| Is it all "too hard"? Well, the period of "energy luxury" has
| brought us to an ecological crisis.
| ativzzz wrote:
| Telling people to reduce their quality of life in order to
| combat climate change is a fruitless endeavor. It will simply
| not happen unless a crisis forces us to.
|
| I would consider anything short of new tech that allows us to
| continue increasing our quality of life while simultaneously
| improving ecological conditions a failure.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| And there are other alternatives in a resource crisis. Most
| notably, the fear with water is not that we will starve,
| but that one country will be forced to kill the users in
| another country over it.
|
| So a crisis forcing reduced usage is after he have
| examined/tried killing the other humans using the resource.
|
| Not a pleasant thought, but reality.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Totally different context, but somewhat same story. The estimate
| for network hookup plus meter, panel, and car charger
| installation for me is CHF 6000. The difference in charging cost
| between public chargers and home charging is 20 cents a kWh. The
| payoff time for home charging would be a decade or more. Instead
| I'll continue using "expensive" public charging until I can
| afford to make an off grid car charger in my garage.
|
| Network connection costs are a necessary evil of legacy power
| networks. But paradoxically, they accelerate the financial un-
| viability of the legacy network, by making off grid way, way more
| financially viable.
| brody_hamer wrote:
| Not mentioned in this article is that Hydro One also charges
| rural ontarians a "delivery fee", which is about 2x the price of
| your usage.
|
| So you might pay 6 to 14 cents per kWh, but your bill will be 3
| times that amount.
|
| The delivery fee is also completely opaque: there's no
| explanation to determine how it's calculated, other than a brief
| text saying "a portion of this fee is fixed, and a portion
| depends on your usage". But I haven't been able to derive those
| values. If the formula for this delivery fee is something like
| '$xx + $yy*kWh'; then it appears these x and y values are not
| static.
| boringg wrote:
| So delivery is for wires, transmission, operations and safety
| (see wildfire maintenance as an example in CA). So whenever
| anyone new connects to the grid the cost will get defrayed
| through this mechanism. My theory is the more that people are
| becoming more effective at avoiding high generation fees the
| utilities will transfer the costs to the delivery fee
| increasing it over time to ensure they continue to get revenue.
|
| Generation is for the portion generated - which will likely go
| up with the surge in commodity prices this year - except since
| you are paying retail rates it will take longer you aren't
| immediately exposed to whole electricity prices and the costs
| of electricity are also political issues in Ontario to a small
| degree.
|
| Also in Ontario we sell power at a loss to Michigan (mainly
| because of overproduction of our Nuclear facilities). Its a
| real boondoggle.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I talked to someone in the power company at some point and they
| said it is a function of how far away you are to the nearest
| generating point. That could be a tale though, but it made some
| sense.
| xmaayy wrote:
| Thats odd, because I'm facing the same 2-3x markup and I live
| about 2KM from an active hydro dam.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ugh. That's a ridiculous surcharge.
| xmaayy wrote:
| It could be that it is the formula you state "$xx + $yy*kWh",
| but you're getting variable amounts of power from different
| generation stations throughout a month that then all have a
| different x and y value
| lostmsu wrote:
| That reminds me of money generating mechanic in Transport
| Tycoon Deluxe, where the further away goods production and
| consumption are, the higher is price for delivering. Even if
| there is a much closer source for the customer you just send
| the train from a factory on the other side of the map and
| charge for distance.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Are there 'mini-grids' that off-grid people can use to connect
| one another?
|
| By connecting everyone's houses together, even with relatively
| low capacity cable, everyone should get more reliability (an
| inverter or battery bank can fail and it doesn't matter), and
| more energy availability (if I use more energy than I generate
| one day, but someone else uses less, that's okay).
|
| I'm imagining it could be as simple as a few hundred meters of
| cable with regular 110v plugs on the end, and a box of
| electronics that can push power in either direction as needed for
| balancing.
| jacquesm wrote:
| This is made explicitly illegal in many places. I've looked
| into this when I was still heavily in renewables and depending
| on where you are crossing your lot lines with power supplied to
| another lot that doesn't have a grid hook-up can be a problem.
| Of course, when the power goes out everybody does this anyway
| (from generator or off-grid installation to the neighbors
| freezer, for instance). But for a permanent hook-up I have not
| seen it.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I am working on a partial off-grid solution for my new home. I
| went through the TX winter storm and don't want to get caught
| with pants down again.
|
| My strategy is to have a sub panel installed which runs the most
| critical loads: Main Panel - 150A
| - 50A A/C - 50A Kitchen Range - 30A Dryer
| - 30A Oven - 100A Sub-panel bypass - 30A
| Inverter/Charger - 50A Generator backfeed (Interlock w/
| 150A Main) Sub Panel - 100A - 30A
| 220V Inverter backfeed (Interlock w/ 100A Main) - 20A
| Furnace/Blower (this is the key bit for TX winter) - All
| lighting/bedroom/office/internet loads - Kitchen 120V
| outlets + fridge - Garage 120V (doors, etc)
|
| In normal operation, the Main Panel would be fed by the grid,
| with the Sub Panel fed by the inverter backfeed. The inverter
| will operate in bypass mode if grid power is available.
| Otherwise, batteries will be drawn from seamlessly. The sub-panel
| bypass (i.e. 100A sub panel main) would only be turned on if
| there was some issue with the inverter setup.
|
| This effectively puts this most important parts of my house on a
| ~double-conversion UPS setup. I am not that worried about losing
| HVAC compressor, range, or laundry capabilities during a grid
| outage. If it gets really desperate, I could still wheel in my
| 12kW generator and run a load of laundry while the inverter
| charges things up. The reason I want to run inverter full-time is
| because we get shitty brownouts almost every day.
|
| I am planning to use a 6kW inverter to run the sub panel. Still
| debating on the # of batteries to use, but I am going to start
| with enough to run 12 hours before I need generator.
|
| And yes, I looked at Tesla power wall. I am not made of money. I
| am going to have this whole house UPS deal done for <8000 USD.
|
| Finally, back-feeding panels is acceptable per code around my
| parts as long as you follow all the rules (e.g. actually install
| the interlocks). This is definitely a more grey area, but its
| also one of those things that is super easy to back-out if you
| are going to sell the house.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "And yes, I looked at Tesla power wall. I am not made of
| money."
|
| Well, if you were ma of of money, would you commit
| autocannibalism? Otherwise, the cost is quite reasonable
| jacquesm wrote:
| I was one of those. The bigger - and hidden - advantage to me was
| that my homebrew power setup (16 solar panels + a 2 KW windmill
| with a backup generator, and 48 KWh of batteries) was much more
| reliable than what Ontario Hydro & Power sold.
|
| The fees are one thing, having your freezer contents spoiled a
| couple of times per year gets old really quickly, and in rural
| Ontario having a well stocked freezer is not optional. Especially
| in the winter the power would go out so frequently it was a
| serious limitation. Coming from NL, where powerfailures are so
| rare that they make the news when they happen this was one of
| those little things that I found it hard to adapt to. When the
| power in Canada fails you are in immediate trouble, your heater
| and sump pump no longer work, you risk all kinds of follow on
| damage.
|
| So reliable power wasn't a luxury and it was relatively easy to
| get that sorted out to a degree that cutting the cord was a
| logical next step (because a grid connected system is supposed to
| shut down when the power fails, the only way out is to stop being
| grid connected).
|
| Apropos high fees: the power company wanted some exorbitant fee
| for disconnecting us (the opposite of a connection fee), I asked
| them quite friendly what would happen if I shorted out the wires,
| 15 minutes later a truck came and someone pulled the road side
| fuses for free ;)
| rexreed wrote:
| Do you have any blog posts and pictures of your setup? I'm
| quite curious to hear how it is working!
| jacquesm wrote:
| There are quite a few posts about this, it was working
| splendidly right up to the point where I moved back to
| Europe.
|
| https://jacquesmattheij.com/how-to-build-a-windmill/
|
| https://jacquesmattheij.com/how-to-build-a-windmill-ii/
| olau wrote:
| I really enjoyed reading the first post about how you went
| about it. Impressive.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Thank you, that was a lot of fun. Current project:
| maximum range e-bike :)
| rexreed wrote:
| Cool. I always wondered why you chose St. Josephs Island to
| settle from Europe. Solar costs have certainly gone down
| since then.
| jacquesm wrote:
| They're a fraction of what they used to be, the panels
| that I bought back then you can now have for 20% of the
| price or so. Funny enough, installation costs have gone
| through the roof so effectively you still pay just the
| same for the total installation unless you do it
| yourself. You'd expect that increased competition would
| drive down installation costs but it didn't really work
| out that way. I'd stay away from movable panels, it was a
| lot of work to put it in and cost quite a bit, for that
| money you can now buy _far_ more panels which more than
| offsets the ability to aim them better.
|
| Installing a windmill is something that I would not
| advise for novel installations unless you have a lot of
| room around you and quite a bit of spare time. Windmills,
| compared to solar are finicky devices and require a lot
| of thinking to get them right, solar power is much
| simpler.
|
| The 'DIY powerwall' scene has turned recycling Li-Ion
| batteries into an art form, not all of it is done safely
| but some of the results are quite impressive, battery
| power too is now a fraction of what it cost back then and
| the life-span has gone up considerably, with more and
| more interesting options right around the corner.
| rexreed wrote:
| Thanks for the detailed answers! As for location, how/why
| did you end up at St. Joseph Island?
| jacquesm wrote:
| When moving to Canada I didn't know much about the
| country so I rented a car in Toronto and drove out West
| all the way to Vancouver and back stopping along the road
| every hour or so to see what it was like there. St.
| Josephs Island really stood out from that trip so that's
| where I ended up.
|
| I got blackballed for life at Avis for that stunt, they
| had an 'unlimited mileage' two week offer for very little
| money, they gave me a brand new car, I averaged 1000 per
| day or so :)
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| Did you have to take it in or swap, so the car could get
| an oil change?
| jacquesm wrote:
| I just returned it at the end of the two week period.
|
| It was nicely broken in by then.
| eatbitseveryday wrote:
| > rural Ontario having a well stocked freezer is not optional.
| Especially in the winter the power would go out so frequently
| it was a serious limitation.
|
| This sucks, but is it not cold enough to put freezer items
| outside?
| kache_ wrote:
| You try lugging a whole deer's worth of venison outside to
| the snow every time your power goes out
| forinti wrote:
| I think the idea was to have the freezer permanently in a
| cold place like a shed attached or very close to the house.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| Canada also has summer.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| The solution to that is underground storage (root
| cellar):
|
| https://www.wired.com/2016/04/store-wine-underground-
| inside-...
| jacquesm wrote:
| No, Canada has only two seasons: winter and construction.
| jdmichal wrote:
| Everyone always talks about Florida not having seasons.
| That's a lie. We have four seasons, just like everyone
| else:
|
| first summer, SUMMER, second summer, and sprautumn.
| forinti wrote:
| Madrid has 9 months of winter and 3 months of hell (nueve
| meses de invierno y 3 de infierno).
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| And now every time you want something from the freezer
| you have to suit up. And forget grabbing food during a
| snowstorm.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| How often are people going in their freezer??? I barely
| use mine. You grab something, cook up a week's worth of
| food. If you run out during a snowstorm, you just cook
| pantry food.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Are you made of sugar?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Cold storage like that is pretty common in the North (as
| are raccoon proof locks ;) ), and many people run outdoor
| woodstoves which require going outside to keep them
| running at least once every two days or so.
|
| Snowstorms are rare enough, even in Northern Canada that
| you can usually wait it out. If it lasts for days then
| that's a different story, but I only recall one multi-day
| blizzard over the five years that I was there.
| colechristensen wrote:
| A chest freezer in a garage or porch solves this problem
| and will stay safely cold for days.
| windowsrookie wrote:
| Sure, that should take less than 20 minutes and I'd get my
| workout in for the day.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| Also, are there not bears in rural Ontario? If there are
| bears (or other large predator animals) in the environment,
| putting food outside can be very dangerous.
| gpm wrote:
| Only black bears, even in summer they're dangerous to the
| food, but not really that dangerous to you (as long as
| you act reasonably). Racoons are more dangerous to food,
| too.
|
| There are bear proof barrels, which are frequently used
| for camping (and I'm not sure if I'd bet on them against
| a bear, but they keep racoons out), or if you don't have
| them you can tie your food up a tree and that does a
| pretty good job too.
| EngCanMan wrote:
| Bears aren't usually a problem in the winter, with
| hibernation and all...
| short12 wrote:
| I'm hardly the strongest guy in the world but that doesn't
| listen exactly seem like a very strenuous effort. Am I
| missing something? Hell I'd probably just keep everything
| Ina chest freezer in the garage or shed year round located
| on an external wall
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| It's pretty darn heavy. The solution of course is to cut
| it into manageable pieces before freezing.
| scythe wrote:
| Frozen food is supposed to stay below 0 F (-18 C) [1]. It
| will be cold outside, but it probably isn't going to stay
| below 0 F all day every day. For example, the average January
| high in Timmins, Ontario is +13 F.
|
| 1: https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/safe-
| food...
| alex_duf wrote:
| >because a grid connected system is supposed to shut down when
| the power fails, the only way out is to stop being grid
| connected
|
| On that note I believe there are electrical devices that
| automatically disconnect you from the grid. It allows you to
| use a battery / solar array to power the house, while not
| feeding back any power to the grid such that you don't harm
| anyone trying to fix the grid.
|
| Now whether or not this is allowed is very much dependent on
| which country you live in.
|
| This video is in the UK and demonstrate such a device:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP51JjnWvLo
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > Now whether or not this is allowed is very much dependent
| on which country you live in.
|
| So basically, to clarify, you're either 100% on the grid, or
| 100% off. There's no using both depending on conditions, is
| that it?
| vkou wrote:
| In some areas, there is both, but it requires having a
| correctly installed automatic disconnect, that cuts you off
| from the grid if the grid loses power.
|
| Many/Most home solar installations do not correctly install
| one, which can be dangerous to linemen.
| iso1210 wrote:
| The vehicle I'm currently sat in at the moment has a 32A
| electrical cable running in the back, currently pulling
| 2881W into a magic box provided by victron
| inverter/charger, that is used to charge a battery (which
| is currently fully charged). That battery is currently
| being drained at a rate of 2881W to run the equipment (via
| the inverter back to 230V)
|
| If I pull the 32A cable, everything carries on working (I
| believe it's a sub-20ms switchover). If the power goes for
| some other reason it carries on working. The truck can run
| on a 230V/13A source just as well (although when the aircon
| is on - not needed currently - we'll be pulling more than
| 13A so the battery will slowly drain). I can even plug into
| two different inputs.
|
| Now this is a mobile vehicle, and I'm no electrician, but
| my understanding is this is perfectly fine -- the victron
| presumably switches from the grid if the input is lost and
| doesn't feed anything back into the grid.
|
| Presumably the same setup could be used to power a home
| instead of several racks of equipment in the back of a
| truck.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That Victron box has an automatic transfer switch in it,
| and is certified for permanent grid connection.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| That depends on your generation capacity and what the rules
| of your grid are.
|
| If you're capable of producing enough power to run your
| home most of the time, then being grid connected and buying
| peak load from the grid itself rather than browning out
| your own devices might be a worth while tradeoff.
|
| Most of us with grid tied solar installations (like me)
| transparently buy and sell electricity to and from the grid
| depending on day conditions. I buy from the grid overnight,
| and sell excess capacity during the day. Depending on how
| much electricity you use a battery system will smooth those
| out, but you need a lot of batteries to eliminate the need
| completely (OP mentioned 48KWh, which is about 3.5 Power
| Walls).
|
| In my area the grid is really reliable and fees are low, so
| buying batteries is not economically viable. I'm currently
| paying $5.24 per month for a grid tie, which is below my
| threshold for caring.
| bentcorner wrote:
| I'm getting a manual transfer switch installed - I live in
| the city (although it's rural-ish where I live) but we get
| occasional power outages and it's often enough (and long
| enough) to be worth the annoyance of getting a generator
| and switch installed, but not enough for me to shell out
| big $$$ for a natural gas generator and automatic transfer
| switch to ensure 100% uptime for my house.
| jacquesm wrote:
| This works well as long as there is a reasonably high
| chance of someone being in the building when the power
| fails. For many rural setups (for instance: weekend
| cottages) that isn't the case so more and more inverters
| come with an automatic transfer switch built in or for a
| small surcharge as an option.
| ghaff wrote:
| Or if you travel. If I ever get a generator installed
| (with automatic transfer switch), it would be primarily
| for the case of a power outage during the winter when I'm
| not around.
| ghaff wrote:
| You can have a backup generator (with a transfer
| switch)--which many do in more rural areas at least in the
| US.
| bluGill wrote:
| I'm not sure about Ontario, but in many places you can be
| grid tied which means that you use both. While it is
| possible to change depending on conditions, the equipment
| to do that isn't very common. Solar systems are just
| starting to come out with single outlets that can run while
| the sun shines without the grid, but that is rare, most
| assume 100% on grid, or 100% off grid.
| jacquesm wrote:
| This is called an 'automatic transfer switch', it basically
| islands your off-grid installation when the power isn't
| available. As you already mention whether or not it is
| allowed is dependent on where you live. As it was the
| electrical inspectors in Northern Ontario were very much in
| bed with the power companies and typically would find all
| kinds of reasons to persuade renewable energy builders to let
| it go and rely on grid power. Given the state of some of the
| homebrew systems I've seen they probably had a point.
|
| Automatic transfer switches were technically allowed but at
| the time I didn't know of a single installation in Northern
| Ontario that got a stamp of approval and was allowed to be
| operated un-attended in grid connected mode.
|
| There is some risk, but this is usually exaggerated, the
| theory goes that a lineman should be able to disconnect a
| segment and then it should be idle, requiring all renewable
| installations down-grid to disable themselves. As a rule this
| is fully automatic anyway because all of the grid connected
| inverters that I'm aware of stop working as soon as the grid
| fails because they use the grid to supply them with phase and
| frequency information required to function.
|
| But that wasn't good enough, the installation needed to be
| _physically_ disconnected from the grid, requiring a very
| large relay and somehow it then had to reconnect if the grid
| came back on for a specified minimum amount of time (I forgot
| the details). By the time I had worked all this out I figured
| since I 'm going to be in island mode anyway most of the time
| I may as well take the shortcut, cut the grid entirely
| (saving a considerable amount of money in the progress) and
| invest the difference into a nice genset (which I did, a
| 5.8KW Kubota diesel).
| cduzz wrote:
| What was the thinking around diesel vs natural gas?
|
| Do you just use heating oil? How do you manage that it has
| a limited shelf life?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Natural gas was possible but would require more capital
| up front, a lot more space and a specially prepared site
| for the tank, annual safety inspections and a place for a
| 40' truck to deliver it and turn around again (and of
| course it still required the genset itself). Diesel was
| by far the easiest solution, especially because we used
| the generator infrequently and once the windmill was up
| not at all.
|
| We used wood for heat and limited shelf life for diesel
| is not an issue at all (it is for ethanol based
| gasoline).
| [deleted]
| lepton wrote:
| Natural gas is very likely unavailable in remote areas.
| Usual fuels would be propane or diesel, which can be
| trucked in.
| rjsw wrote:
| From experience, you can get through a couple of big
| propane tanks per year just using it for cooking.
| tw04 wrote:
| People seem to think Natural Gas just magically makes its
| way down the lines. NG requires power as well. If power
| is out for any period of time you lose natural gas soon
| after due to compression stations going offline unless
| you happen to be one of the lucky ones who lives off a
| branch that is self-powered.
|
| https://geekprepper.com/how-long-will-natural-gas-last-
| witho...
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| That article is from 2015. The bulk of natural gas
| infrastructure is self powered these days because
| declines in gas prices since then have made that a
| comparatively better option in more places and the
| natural attrition and upgrade cycle of equipment.
| reaperducer wrote:
| I don't think "the bulk" is true.
|
| Last year's deadly winter storm in Texas showed that a
| lot of natural gas infrastructure does indeed rely on
| electricity.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Last year's deadly winter storm in Texas showed that a
| lot of natural gas infrastructure does indeed rely on
| electricity.
|
| This is just a lie.
|
| A bunch of crap in TX froze up because the physical
| infrastructure was not designed to operate in those
| temps. When you're compressing and decompressing gasses
| moisture becomes ice. Their facilities were not designed
| to prevent icing in low ambient tempts. They had no
| problem getting power for the most part. Remember,
| generators are SOP for pretty much all utilities and
| doubly so anywhere you might get a hurricane (which is a
| good chunk of TX).
| jacquesm wrote:
| Being wrong is ok. Being wrong while being belligerent is
| not ok.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| A snide comment like that coming from you is a strong
| reminder of why stereotypes exist.
| detaro wrote:
| Even just the first two google results paint a very
| different picture, so please bring evidence if you throw
| around accusations of lying.
|
| https://www.texastribune.org/2021/03/18/texas-winter-
| storm-b...
|
| > _That meant that Oncor, which delivers power to the
| Permian Basin -- the state's most productive oil and
| natural gas basin -- had unwittingly shut off some of the
| state's power supply when it followed orders to begin the
| outages._
|
| > _When Texas deregulated its electricity market in the
| early 2000s, making supply and demand the primary forces
| for the price of power and increasing competition,
| wholesale power prices fell. That made it cheaper to
| electrify natural gas compressor stations and other
| equipment rather than the traditional method of using the
| natural gas produced in the field to run the compressor's
| turbines or engines, energy experts said._
|
| https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-
| insights/latest-ne...
|
| > _Much the the state 's natural gas production and
| processing were struggling during the storm even before
| they lost power because of the weather, causing problems
| at the wellhead and the plants. But the failures were
| exacerbated by widespread power outages in the Permian
| Basin and Eagle Ford Shale, creating gaps where the gas
| could not be delivered to the gas-fired power plants that
| desperately needed supplies to generate electricity._
|
| > _At the peak, more than half of the state 's natural
| gas supplies were knocked offline by power losses,
| according to ERCOT, causing at least 20% of the total
| power outages during the week._
| beerandt wrote:
| (New) Compressor stations now must now be electrically
| powered to get permitted by the federal forces that be.
| (With very few exceptions.)
|
| Even replacing compressors that were self powered now
| need to be electric.
|
| It doesn't make any sense, except that it's another
| regulatory expense resulting in both higher cost and less
| reliability.
| cduzz wrote:
| Oh, sorry, I didn't actually mean "natural gas that comes
| from a magic pipe" -- I meant propane that sits in a big
| tank in the backyard. I know intellectually that they're
| different gases, probably with different numbers of
| carbons in the molecule, but I have the bad habit of
| using them interchangeably....
|
| In the "rural" areas I spend the most time in (cape cod,
| not exactly rural but also with sketchy utilities) people
| mostly have generators running off of big (well, probably
| medium sized) propane tanks that I imagine may also be
| used for cooking / heating as well.
|
| I'm more curious about the stability of the fuel over the
| long term if it isn't cycled often, where I imagine
| propane / NG has an advantage, but I guess if you're
| using it as backup to solar and wind, there's an
| expectation that you'll go through a couple tanks a
| winter regardless so stability isn't as much of an issue.
| nickff wrote:
| Propane and methane are very different, and you should be
| careful about the differences if you use either. Propane
| is almost always sold as liquefied propane gas (LPG) at a
| relatively low pressure, whereas natural gas is almost
| always sold in its pressurized or compressed gaseous
| form. The most important difference is that if you have a
| natural gas leak, it will 'float' in the air, and
| dissipate; propane will (dangerously) 'sink', and pool
| around the source, and is liable to explode. Indoor
| propane installations should always have at least one
| propane detector.
| robocat wrote:
| LPG stands for liquified _petroleum_ gas, which is
| sometimes just propane:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquefied_petroleum_gas
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Propane and methane are very different, and you should
| be careful about the differences if you use either.
|
| Also be careful to note that "natural gas" is _mostly_
| methane but with a significant mix of heavier
| hydrocarbons too.
| bluGill wrote:
| In practice the lineman risk isn't as real as it seems at
| first. Odds are when the lineman shutdowns a segment, if
| your system tries to supply power there are enough other
| people on the segment that you will trip your local
| overload protection and isolate the grid.
|
| I don't blame lineman for not wanting to trust that though.
| My understanding is their practice is to always short out
| the line when working on them as that is the only way to be
| 100% sure it isn't live. (note that linemen work on live
| lines all the time, but when they need a dead line they
| ensure it is dead)
| jacquesm wrote:
| Agreed. But given what I've seen in some off-grid
| installations I really don't blame them. And I have seen
| one installation that tried to supply all of Ontario when
| it didn't go off-line as it should have, that wasn't a
| really pretty sight. The inverter died quite
| spectacularly, judging by the scorch marks on the wall
| above it, all of the magic smoke had definitely gone out
| of that one.
| beezle wrote:
| Just adding from an experience researching solar for a
| condo development - if you want the fire department to try
| to save your house, you need to be able to cut the panels
| off, grid connection or not.
|
| Likewise, putting panels on both sides of the roof makes it
| difficult, if not impossible, to vent a fire through the
| roof. The figures are ever changing, but the additional
| weight of many panels can also be a consideration when
| fighting a fire.
|
| Really urge anyone considering adding solar panels on their
| home to speak with their local fire/ems prior to
| installation/signing a contract to be sure you know their
| requirements (and in many places this is still evolving).
| darknavi wrote:
| I am not familiar with house fires or how to fight them.
|
| > putting panels on both sides of the roof makes it
| difficult, if not impossible, to vent a fire through the
| roof.
|
| If a fire is bad enough to need to be vented from a hole
| in the roof, wouldn't the building likely be lost
| already?
| reaperducer wrote:
| Even if the building is lost, the firefighters still want
| to put it out to keep it from spreading.
|
| A few weeks ago, the Mount Charleston Lodge in Las Vegas
| burned to the ground. Firefighters put most of their
| effort into saving the surrounding national forest.
| Cerium wrote:
| Not in my experience. There was a fire in the third floor
| unit of a building I was living in (one floor up and one
| unit over). It was a three floor building, so that was a
| roof unit. The firefighters cut vent holes and were able
| to contain the damage to that unit.
| stickfigure wrote:
| If you're building condos, you aren't in a rural area.
|
| In my rural area, everyone ground mounts because space is
| cheap. I'm a volunteer firefighter and so far none of the
| trainings have mentioned solar (venting roofs yes). But
| then, we joke that we'll arrive just in time to put out
| your foundation.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Reminds me of the days when you needed written permission
| from the telco in order to connect a fax machine or modem
| to the phone line. I remember standing in line at the local
| phone company office and explaining to a nice chain-smoking
| office lady (you could still smoke in windowless offices in
| those days) what a "modem" was and why I wanted to plug one
| into their sacred network.
| mindslight wrote:
| I believe that inverters with integrated transfer switches
| are more common these days, due to the popularity of
| battery systems like Powerwall. I was reading the manual
| for one, and it had both a grid connection (to your main
| panel), and a "protected power" connection for a subpanel
| that will remain powered regardless of grid power.
|
| They must still have some kind of internal transfer switch
| (as opposed to double conversion), but I would think as a
| single listed device with anti-islanding, they would be a
| lot easier sell to an inspector. Then again that AHJ sounds
| a bit dodgy ( _" specified minimum amount of time"_) so
| maybe they're still resisting.
| briffle wrote:
| Automatic Transfer switches are very common in Server Rooms
| and datacenters where there is a Generator in use. I'm not
| sure why they are not more common in Solar. I have a parent
| with a full house generator that also has a Automatic
| Transfer Switch, its essentially right above the breaker
| box. the breaker box either gets power from the generator,
| OR from the power company, never both. When power comes
| back on, the ATS senses it, and sends a signal to the
| generator after 30 seconds or so that it is switching over,
| and to shut down.
| toast0 wrote:
| Grid tied home solar is usually about economics (and
| sometimes happy feelings), not reliability.
|
| If you want automatic transfer, you need to add storage,
| and a more complex inverter that can operate in bridge
| tied and island mode, and that cuts into the economics.
| You might also need to get more panels to handle
| projected loads during projected outages, but most net
| metering tarrifs I've seen won't compensate you if you
| over generate.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I can assure you that reliability factors in heavily in
| Grid tied home solar.
| Symbiote wrote:
| That must depend on the area.
|
| People in the Netherlands or the UK have reliable power
| anyway, but there are still some home solar
| installations.
| jsight wrote:
| That varies greatly. In my area, the grid is extremely
| reliable. I rarely see systems that are setup to handle
| outages as the cost isn't really worth it on its own.
| Throwawayaerlei wrote:
| Here in the US Midwest I recently observed some crews
| repairing a fault just upstream of me, and the last thing
| they did before reconnecting to upstream of that fault was
| disconnecting a set of yellow cables which were obviously
| grounding the downstream wires.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Layers of protection. Laws on what can backfeed into the
| grid, ground the wires, wear safety gear. No different
| than in computer science using both a firewall AND
| salting your password. The more layers, the less likely 1
| mistake gets you.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Exactly. If you want to get fired in a hurry from any
| utility or large plant: override someone else's lock-out.
| If they don't beat you into a coma first.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Not even which country, which sub-entity within your country.
| Here in America it's going to vary on a state by state basis.
| rdli wrote:
| I've been interested in how to do this -- in particular, how
| you tie in your solar inverter, windmill, and batteries
| together. Are you using AC to tie everything together, or are
| you able to use DC everywhere until you use it?
| jacquesm wrote:
| AC as much as you can. Wiring thickness quickly becomes a
| limiting factor so you site your inverters right next to your
| battery banks and you keep your solar voltage as high as your
| inverter allows you to (up to 400V these days).
| londons_explore wrote:
| You can do it either way.
|
| Tying together with DC usually works out cheaper, since MPPT
| tracking buck converters to charge the batteries are cheaper
| than having extra inverter capacity.
|
| As a bonus, you can buy quite a lot of 12V DC equipment made
| for cars and caravans which tends to be a lot more energy
| efficient.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Modern systems with multiple DC sources are usually all tied
| to a common DC bus (24-60V depending) that is parallel with
| the batteries. Devices called charge controllers take the
| unregulated DC from a DC source (PV, Wind, hydro...) and
| output a constant voltage which can be used to charge the
| batteries or be directly consumed by the inverters. The
| inverter takes care of tying the DC bus to the AC side of
| things including the grid and/or generator. Modern DC tied
| inverters perform multiple functions as they can be
| programmed to use AC or DC as the source, charge the
| batteries and even feed power back into the grid.
| vinay427 wrote:
| > Coming from NL
|
| Given the Canadian context, do you mean the Netherlands or
| Newfoundland and Labrador?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Netherlands.
| mytdi wrote:
| Oh, I had assumed Newfoundland and Labrador because of, as
| you say, the Canadian context. So it was actually
| Netherlands.
| nervousvarun wrote:
| > When the power in Canada fails you...
|
| I think contextually the very next sentence gives you your
| answer here.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| In a latter comment he says he moved "back to Europe" and
| links to his site reveal a Dutch looking name.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28999144
| vmception wrote:
| > Coming from NL
|
| NL in this context is Netherlands? Or another area of Canada?
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Probably Newfoundland
| iso1210 wrote:
| > because a grid connected system is supposed to shut down when
| the power fails, the only way out is to stop being grid
| connected
|
| I've just had a tour of a hydrogen fuel cell setup we have here
| at our OB. I'm no electrician, but from what I could tell, it's
| plugged into the mains, currently drawing about 3KW, and
| hydrogen is producing another 12KW (we haven't got much demand
| for this event - the generator will produce 250kW if we want).
|
| It comes in from the mains through an isolating transformer,
| into the generator and UPS, and then outgoing power to us goes
| through another isolating transformer (to stop mains hum that
| we saw last time, in both directions)
|
| It seems it's perfectly fine to have this sort of setup
| connected to the grid in the UK. Obviously it's more expensive
| to do so than just wiring in your own diesel generator.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's a _very_ nice bit of kit that you have there.
| Pictures?
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Is 2 kW a typo? That's pretty small. I typically see 12-15 kW
| residential turbines.
| jacquesm wrote:
| 2 KW is a 5 meter diameter windmill, which is pretty large
| for a homebrew. 12-15 KW turbines are major feats of
| engineering, I would not trust myself to put together
| something that size, besides the gear required to put it up.
| A 2 KW machine has an alternator/blade combo that weighs
| close to 100 Kg, about the limit of what you can raise and
| lower with normal equipment. Keep in mind that it sits on top
| of a 10 to 20 meter high tower, which makes raising and
| lowering it a job all by itself.
| chaostheory wrote:
| > having your freezer contents spoiled a couple of times per
| year gets old really quickly
|
| This is now becoming a reality for more and more people in the
| Bay Area due to a combination of corruption and failing
| infrastructure.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| Where I am in SF it seems to be the opposite. Until a few
| years ago the power would go out every time it rained heavily
| but at some point they fixed it and now we get electricity
| when it rains. (Major roads still become impassable when it
| rains because it happens infrequently enough they're not
| built with a camber.)
| namdnay wrote:
| How long are your power cuts? If you keep it shut, a freezer
| is fine for 24-48h
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| If you can't afford utility hookups for your new construction,
| don't live rural. Live in the city limits. That's why city limits
| exist. There are economic boundaries where a city can fend for
| its residents.
|
| This isn't about 5th generation people losing power, it is about
| people choosing to live rural and feeling entitled to costly
| infrastructure for free.
| jbarham wrote:
| Personally my main takeaway from the article is less that
| renewable energy sources are a good alternative to the grid but
| more that the monopoly Hydro One connection fees are outrageously
| high. $25 - $80k connection fees seem like extortion in rural
| Ontario where the average annual income is probably around $80k.
|
| I wonder if they'll do a follow-up article next year to report
| how the solar systems performed over the long Northern Ontario
| winter...
| giantg2 wrote:
| Connections costs for utilities can be high like that in the US
| too. Running electric, sewer, and water is easily over $25k in
| many locations.
| Ekaros wrote:
| 25k doesn't sound entirely unreasonable. If it includes
| running them to where services run and connecting them. Just
| for connecting it is high.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It's not entirely clear to me in the article. Does the
| utility exist at the property already? My understanding
| this that if you're on a rural road and build a house past
| the last one built, the electric company will try to make
| your connection fee cover them extending the lines on their
| side to your property. Then you still have to cover the
| lines on your property.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| A brand new septic system (bed & tank) could run you up that
| high, too, these days. And a well is pricey as well.
|
| Living rural is a constant money drain. Though in theory you
| are building systems that can sustain your independence later.
| In theory. In reality, rarely the case.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| Living urban is also a money drain. To get a decent sized
| place, you need to pay HoA fees, high rents, security
| deposits often get stolen, not to mention pet fees, parking
| fees, expensive QoL, exposure to pollution and noise, lack of
| quiet and solitude. I'm semi-rural now and while we do have
| to pay for well upgrades and power backup systems, we get a
| huge beautiful quiet piece of land for our money.
| mitigating wrote:
| And I like that you understand that choice and cost. I
| don't like the concept that tax dollars should be used to
| pay for the extremely high cost of electricity and other
| utilities for a small number of people to keep rural living
| costs low.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Earlier this month the water line from my well pump to my
| pressure tank just... exploded. Water gushed all over my
| basement until I remembered where the off switch for the
| pump was. I'm lucky I was home, because it would have just
| kept running until it got to a place where it could drain
| out (i.e. upstairs) or the power shut off because
| everything shorted out.
|
| It's real bliss out here in the country, let me tell you
| :-) My son was home and got to hear me swear with words and
| tones that he'd never encountered before.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Get an automatic line break & low pressure shutoff valve.
| They make DC, AC, and mechanical solutions.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Yeah it would need to sit between the pump and the
| pressure tank. My existing shutoff valve is -- like most
| -- _after_ the pressure tank. What I really need is
| something to cut the AC power to the well the moment
| water starts to touch the floor under the tank.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| Thats why you go suburban. Low COL but high quality of
| services and infrastructure. It's amazing what you can
| accomplish if you don't care about the solvency of your
| community :D
| mitigating wrote:
| Is it high compared meaning they are making a huge profit or
| that people can't afford it? If it really does that cost much
| then subsidies are possible. However it seems some people live
| in rural areas to save money, you hear about that often here
| where people would post something like "I moved to the woods in
| North Dakota and only pay $500 a month" is it fair to then use
| tax money to help keep that price low?
| koheripbal wrote:
| Do you have any idea how much it costs to run a rural line and
| maintain it?
|
| Even at 80k, the govt is still losing money.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Governments provide services - in general - in no small part
| because services are almost all cost.
|
| Do you want your citizens to have electricity, as is expected
| in a modern 21st century country - or would you rather folks
| go without because of cost? If yes, then getting electricity
| to houses should be a priority, even if they never profit.
|
| It should also be very noted that electric companies tend to
| balance the rural costs out with charging urban customers a
| bit more to make up for the difference, much like healthcare
| (whether it be premiums or taxes)
| Gigachad wrote:
| The option is never going to be power or no power. It's
| going to be paying the connection fee, setting up your own
| power, or living somewhere already connected.
|
| Any proposal for governments to spend more on something
| should also come with a description of what they should
| spend less on to compensate for it.
|
| Why should urban citizens subsidize a lifestyle choice for
| others? If you want to live out in the middle of nowhere
| you shouldn't expect everyone else to pay you for it.
| kumarsw wrote:
| Overhead distribution is somewhere on the order of $100k/mile
| to install. Maintenance varies depending on how much tree
| trimming is needed.
| motohagiography wrote:
| I'm all for cost recovery and fiscal restraint, and the
| exception I'd propose in this case is that rural residential
| electrification is the cost of government. If you want to
| expand your habitable footprint as a state, it means some
| reciprocity for the people living there. The govt needs rural
| people settling remote areas more than those people need
| govt.
|
| Satellite internet changes a lot, as if you can do off grid
| renewable power with satellite internet, economic viability
| and mobility of populations changes radically. We've seen it
| post-covid with rural real estate prices matching those of
| cities as the result of remote work (I think).
|
| Hydro was used as a giant opaque debt slush fund by previous
| governments, where they levered up debt secured against
| revenues and then blew it on favoured groups to secure re-
| election. "Infrastructure," surely, but now you have a debt
| retirement fee on every hydro bill that is essentially a tax.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| > The govt needs rural people settling remote areas more
| than those people need govt.
|
| I'm not sure I agree with this, but I'm curious to hear
| your logic. My understanding is that more urbanization is
| required for both environmental and infrastructural
| reasons.
| Gigachad wrote:
| >If you want to expand your habitable footprint as a state
|
| Why is this desirable? You basically just expand every
| single cost without much benefit and reducing the quality
| of facilities provided to everyone. The general trend of
| populations globally is centralization which provides
| massive benefits.
| satyrnein wrote:
| _The govt needs rural people settling remote areas_
|
| Can you expand on this? Is there a general social benefit
| to people settling remote areas?
| motohagiography wrote:
| Economic growth in diversified regions. They are the
| roots for growth, where in cities, the marginal value
| they contribute is a fraction of what they can contribute
| outside of one. There is a prevailing political worldview
| predicated on warehousing people in cities and making
| them dependent on public services, which values human
| life as managed livestock in service of an owner, and not
| as an engine of growth and development, but that is one I
| do not share.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| > They are the roots for growth, where in cities, the
| marginal value they contribute is a fraction of what they
| can contribute outside of one.
|
| It sounds like you are ascribing some special virtue to
| rural living that I just don't see. When I think about
| work that adds social value, very little of it _requires_
| rural living (farming, mostly) and most of it can be done
| anywhere (computer programming, skilled trades,
| manufacturing, etc.). Why is a person 's contribution
| bigger if they are rural? What special value is there in
| doing these things in a place no one lives? Why do we
| need to increase growth in some arbitrary rural location.
|
| > There is a prevailing political worldview predicated on
| warehousing people in cities and making them dependent on
| public services
|
| And ironically, you are arguing that we should be
| providing these people a public service, presumably
| because they are dependent on it. I fail to see where the
| cut off should be.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Their marginal contribution is greater because they
| literally bring human civilization from where it is, to
| where it is not yet, and where there is more opportunity
| for growth by virtue of nobody else being there, and
| return what they produce there back to the urban
| economies.
|
| A marginal chicken in a mass feeding factory is less
| valuable than a marginal chicken in a backyard. It's a
| question of numbers and impact. The life of a marginal
| person in a city is not as valuable or meaningful to
| their neighbours as a marginal person in the country, as
| there are more strong ties in rural areas, and more weak
| ones in urban ones. In this sense of marginal numbers,
| cities cheapen lives.
|
| Maybe that's the point, where humans should switch our
| r/K selection strategy from high investment in K-selected
| lives to low investment r-selected lives, and try to
| exist and spread more like bugs than mammals, but that's
| not something I'd advocate.
|
| If you want the necessary growth and evolution of a
| civilization for long term survival, you need to
| diversify it over geography.
|
| The cut off for public services is the persons
| relationship to them. When you pull hydro lines into
| rural areas, you facilitate growth from each marginal
| person out there. When you supply power to a new suburb,
| you are facilitating marginal growth there at a lower
| rate. The public service dependency occurs when growth is
| a zero-sum competition for the attention of a provider
| (see Ivan Illich's radical monopoly and related ideas),
| instead of exogenously sourced growth in a rural setting,
| merely facilitated by public services.
|
| The crux of the policy disagreement is in different
| axioms about the value of individual life (v. collective
| "good"), which I don't think we reconcile here, but we
| can see how our assessments of a policy are certainly
| artifacts of them.
| [deleted]
| ipaddr wrote:
| The government of Canada paid/pays people to live in
| remote northern regions. Use it or lose it. It allows
| Canada to claim regions that could be up for dispute in
| the future. Canada and Greenland engage in events that
| visit remote places and leave symbols like flags to show
| usage and provide a historical record for the world court
| if it came to it.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Disputed by who?
|
| Some scattered towns aren't going to significantly impact
| claims by indigenous peoples, and anybody else claiming
| big chunks of the top half of Canada is going to get
| laughed out of the room.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Why would maintenance be covered in the connection fee? Not
| only is it backwards from the usual financial game of
| lowering up front costs by hiding them in recurring costs but
| there is no way to know up front if you'll need to maintain
| that line for 2 years or 200.
| pridkett wrote:
| This is why governments have passed incentive acts to help.
| In the United States, that came from the Rural
| Electrification Act[0]. It was a recognition that rural areas
| are critical to our urban areas because they provide food and
| resources, in addition to an occasional oddball university
| location or something to stare at on a transcon flight.
|
| Although the law is nearly 90 years old, it continues to be
| foundational for supporting rural communities. In 2014 it was
| updated to provide support for rural electric and telephone
| cooperatives to supply gigabit internet. And that's why the
| north woods of Minnesota often has better internet than large
| swaths of Minneapolis and St Paul.
|
| [0]:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act
| analog31 wrote:
| It's interesting that 90 years ago, supplying your own
| electrical power was unthinkable. Also, there were
| communities that existed in advance of electrification, so
| there was at least some population density to justify wired
| power.
|
| For people moving into a relatively unpopulated area, in a
| different country, it might make more sense today, to let
| people bring in their own power generation, maybe subsidize
| it a bit if needed.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| Seems like providing the north woods of Minnesota better
| internet than the Twin Cities is a rather poor investment
| of resources
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What is poor is not providing the Twin Cities with fiber
| to the home internet. No need for it to be one or the
| other.
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| > Even at 80k, the govt is still losing money.
|
| Government shouldn't be run for profit, frankly it should pay
| for the entire connection.
|
| If the government is going to insist on making money, then it
| should operate nationalised utilities, which provide a
| baseline service and cost, and if private enterprise can
| compete with that by offering a better product and/or cheaper
| service, then all the more power to them.
|
| Having a situation where a single commercial entity has a
| monopoly position seems to be the second-worst option, just
| above "no service at all".
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| The key question is: Instead of what?
|
| When the govt spends money on something, it is
| asking/telling people to spend their effort on that
| task/product, instead of something else that they
| would/could have been doing instead.
|
| So if the govt spends $80k of people's effort on the rural
| line, what doesn't get done as a result?
| iso1210 wrote:
| The system should either break even (which it doesn't do),
| or cost money (which means taxpayers subsidise it), or make
| money (which means users subsidise other taxpayers)
|
| The question is to what extent should grid connections to
| new rural homes be subsidised by taxpayers, which is of
| course a political decision - just like to what extent
| roads, military, healthcare, education, oil production, etc
| should be subsidised.
|
| A better solution may be to allow the subsidiy money to be
| used to provide grants for off-grid. It may be better for
| the taxpyer to give someone $30k to sort their power out,
| than to spend $40k on an electric line to their house.
| neilwilson wrote:
| "he system should either break even (which it doesn't
| do), or cost money (which means taxpayers subsidise it),
| or make money (which means users subsidise other
| taxpayers)"
|
| That assumes a fixed amount of money and a fixed amount
| of stuff. Neither of which is the case in a country with
| its own floating exchange rate like Canada.
|
| Government doesn't spend money, it spends people. What
| else were you proposing to do with the electrical
| engineer that is so much more important than maintaining
| electrical grid connections to citizens?
| iso1210 wrote:
| You can of course print money instead of raising taxes
| but the principle's the same.
|
| Lets rephrase it then. How many hours of electrical
| engineer time should be spent hooking up a new home in
| rural Ontario? Why would an electrical engineer who lives
| in the Toronto suburbs want to do this? How much time and
| effort should a country devote to running and maintaining
| this connection? What does the engineer get in return?
|
| Either he gets more in return (thus "makes money"), gets
| less in return (thus "requires subsidy") or it's even
| (thus "breaks even")
|
| How much should the person who wants to live in rural
| ontario give for the engineer's time? It seems Canada
| decides they should give a little, but not the same
| amount of time the engineer gives (and instead the
| engineer should be compensated by time from the rest of
| the country)
|
| As to what that electrical engineer could be doing that
| would be better? Well how about fixing the electrics in a
| childrens hospital? Or maybe they could spend the day
| working on their garden, or watching netflix.
| vehemenz wrote:
| > The question is to what extent should grid connections
| to new rural homes be subsidised by taxpayers, which is
| of course a political decision
|
| 100% agree. Not only that, but rural development is
| inherently connected to these other subsidies. Rural
| populations tend to have worse education, worse health
| outcomes, and more expensive roads/mile/capita. Not to
| mention the negative political externalities rural
| populations produce (maybe a modern US-only phenomenon).
| mindslight wrote:
| > _the negative political externalities rural populations
| produce_
|
| I'd argue that the causality goes the other way - people
| move to rural areas to escape the demands of the high-
| interdependency core. And I'd say much of our political
| divide is from that highly connected core extending its
| influence into the previously left-alone areas, first
| through broadcast media consolidation and now through
| social media and its consolidation.
| 8note wrote:
| Is there data on people moving from urban to rural areas?
| nknezek wrote:
| I agree that many people move away from cities to
| "escape", but it's important to recognize that for many
| decades now, rural residents have received significantly
| more benefits from the government than they pay in taxes,
| while urban dwellers pay more in taxes than they receive
| in benefits. Essentially, those who live in cities are
| living within their means and subsidizing those who live
| in rural areas.
|
| From an economic perspective, rural areas are still
| highly connected and interdependent - think roads,
| infrastructure, food, water, electricity, internet,
| transport networks. Those who move from cities to rural
| areas to "escape the demands of the high-interdependency
| core" simply shift from majority "producing" to majority
| "receiving" benefits from our interdependent society.
|
| I'm a huge fan of rural living, but it is expensive. We
| as a society have decided to subsidize it to various
| degrees. I'm OK with this, but also think cheap,
| individual solutions should be used when feasible. For
| example, sewer lines are very expensive in rural areas,
| so most houses maintain their own septic tank. Rural
| houses often use a Propane tank they refill rather than a
| gas line hookup. They often have their own well for
| water. Thus, the high grid-connection fees in the article
| make sense, as rural residents can just build their own
| off-grid electricity production.
| mindslight wrote:
| I agree with most of your comment, but it's a bit too
| judgemental.
|
| The main political wedge we're facing is the absolute
| destruction of the manufacturing-production economy
| (which requires open space and other distributed
| capital), in favor of the finance-metagame economy (which
| doesn't). In this wider context talking about subsidies
| is a bit disingenuous, because if we had a balanced
| economy then resources would be flowing to the rural
| areas from the urban areas as revenue of private
| companies. Instead, most of the resources for building
| out non-urban infrastructure are flowing abroad, while
| the little remaining bit trying to mitigate the hollowing
| out gets called a subsidy.
|
| It's easy to get frustrated with the regressive
| hypocritical politics, especially with the last few years
| of objectively utter nonsense. But if that is ever going
| to get fixed it's going to require even more resources
| going to rural areas to alleviate the poverty driving the
| anger and spite. Ideally this would happen by fixing the
| market dynamics, but really it needs to happen any way
| possible.
| nknezek wrote:
| I understand your point - farming, mining, and
| manufacturing are all essential economic activities that
| have largely shifted overseas post-WWII. This has
| hollowed the rural economy in US and other western
| nations while also making goods vastly cheaper and
| bringing billions out of poverty worldwide.
|
| In my mind I am very willing to help and support many
| parts of a community and society. We need all sorts of
| work to build a society - finance, tech, manufacturing,
| non-remunerated work (raising children, etc).
|
| I'm in favor of gov investment in infrastructure as I
| believe it helps all of us grow. Same with healthcare and
| education.
|
| But it is _very_ important to make these benefits
| transparent and clear, otherwise we end up in the
| situation we now face, where the same voters that would
| be most helped by these investments argue against such
| programs and are strongly anti-government (see Trump,
| Brexit, Jan 6, etc).
| mindslight wrote:
| > _But it is _very_ important to make these benefits
| transparent and clear, otherwise we end up in the
| situation we now face_
|
| I strongly disagree on the causality here. The red state
| subsidies are a blue team talking point. To the extent
| the reality gets through to the red team, it's
| _anticonvincing_ because the main thing they feel they
| 're missing is self determination.
|
| Telling them to be appreciative of federal welfare, and
| they can get even more of it (eg UBI), is the exact
| opposite of what they want. They want purpose, hence the
| attraction to regressive ideologies promising that there
| is purpose to their suffering. Purpose cannot be provided
| by overt direct subsidies - it can only come from the
| feeling of earning one's way, regardless of the truth of
| the matter (eg how the metagame industries suffice). By
| extension this means revitalization of rural economies,
| no matter how artificial. Then again after decades of
| ZIRP what does "artificial" even mean?
| edmundsauto wrote:
| It sounds like you're suggesting the subsidies remain,
| but the red states get to pretend that it's not the anti-
| government individualism their personal ideologies
| demand?
|
| If people want self-dependence and self-determination,
| they should strive for it - not play acting that they are
| independent. What they should not do is complain about
| the entire concept of government intervention
| ("socialism!") while benefitting from the exact same
| thing, paid for disproportionately by the groups they
| demonize.
| nknezek wrote:
| I grew up in a very rural, conservative small town and
| still talk to many people there.
|
| They loved the $1500 checks in their accounts. They see
| rising cost of housing and several have suggested
| government subsidies for homes or a massive government
| program to build more houses.
|
| I agree people want purpose, but I don't think rural
| conservatives are actually against government programs or
| subsidies, as long as it benefits them and is not
| presented from the perspective of modern culture war and
| media. They don't like "handouts" but they DO like roads,
| water, electricity, farm insurance, military bases, post
| offices, etc.
| mindslight wrote:
| Your experience would seem to support the first part of
| my comment. What is making " _benefits transparent and
| clear_ " if not presenting " _from the perspective of
| modern culture war and media_ " ? Pointing out that their
| communities are net subsidized directly undermines the
| feeling of self sufficiency. FWIW based on my personal
| experience, I would say that people accepting the
| handouts justify it as at least getting something "back"
| for themselves, while others get so much more - it's not
| like the cognitive dissonance just goes away.
|
| But sure one doesn't need to be so indirect as I went on
| to say in the second half of my comment. I feel like
| that's playing awfully close to the cognitive dissonance
| though, in that any given program can very easily end up
| on the talking point shitlist and become permanently
| unwelcome. Ideologically I'm a fan of decentralization so
| I'm inclined to focus on fixing the distributed economy,
| even though it requires a similar amount of forcing.
| nknezek wrote:
| I think we agree on most practical aspects of this
| situation.
|
| We both agree that this situation of expensive grid
| hookups in rural areas is simple economics. We both agree
| to make it affordable would require a subsidy. Rural
| residents seem to want this cheaper/subsidized, but
| several in the article are also happy to build their own
| infrastructure instead. I think that's great!
|
| It seems where we may have disagreement is around wider
| political issues regarding perspectives on government,
| media, and culture. Specifically, I think we have
| slightly different perspectives and theories about the
| mindset and views of conservative rural residents.
|
| That's totally fine! However, it feels a bit like we're
| both talking in circles without a clear topic / thesis or
| enough personal experience to provide strong insights.
|
| Enjoyed the discussion though!
| mitigating wrote:
| Don't they often argue that government handouts are what
| prevent people from finding jobs, innovating, or moving
| to an area with jobs.
|
| I don't think it's too hypocritical to accept government
| handouts because you need it while at the same time
| wishing you had a job so you didn't have to take handouts
|
| However not everyone feels that way and they use a very
| broad stroke when it comes to Government assistance which
| was referred to by some as "socialism" and later
| "communism"
| pjlegato wrote:
| Farming in the US did not shift overseas. American
| farming output in 2021 is higher than ever, approaching
| 3x WWII levels[1].
|
| Farming in the US rather consolidated around massive
| economies of scale, where a few large industrial-scale
| players with large capital available can produce vast
| amounts of food at a very low unit cost.
|
| This was partially the result of government subsidies and
| policy ("go big or get out" in the 70s) and partially the
| result of large technological advances yielding huge
| productivity gains. Far less labor is now required to
| produce a unit of food. Petroleum-based fertilizers
| developed in the 1940s improved crop yields in many cases
| by thousands of percent. At the same time, mass produced
| mechanized farm equipment (tractors, harvesters, etc.)
| became far cheaper and widely available.
|
| The traditional family farms that dominated agriculture
| until the mid-20th century have become largely
| uncompetitive in the commodity market, leading to many
| social problems in rural areas and a widespread
| perception that American farming is no longer a thing. A
| few find a niche in organic farming or specialty crops.
| Many just sold their land to a large operation, lived off
| of the proceeds for a while, then became poor.
|
| It's important to note too that this consolidation has
| had beneficial social effects: in inflation-adjusted
| terms, food is _extremely_ cheap now as compared to any
| prior point in history. Put another way, the amount of
| minimum wage hours of labor required to procure 2,000
| calories a day is lower than ever before in human
| history. _Obesity_ is now a significant health problem
| among lower income Americans, whereas historically
| starvation and malnutrition due to high food costs were
| the main food issues for the poor.
|
| American farming is bigger than ever; it's just done on a
| vast industrial scale now.
|
| [1] https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2020/03/05/look-
| agricultural...
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >Government shouldn't be run for profit, frankly it should
| pay for the entire connection.
|
| People should likewise not be able to run up arbitrary high
| costs and expect the government (i.e., other people) to pay
| for it.
|
| You cannot run anything, including governments, forever at
| a loss. People pay for things in every case.
| mitigating wrote:
| So people move to rural areas because it's cheaper and it's
| only cheaper because utilities are subsidized?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Government shouldn't be run for profit, frankly it should
| pay for the entire connection.
|
| Except when the service is being provided to people you
| don't like. (not sure if I should /s this since based on my
| observation this is what most people unironically want).
| danans wrote:
| > if private enterprise can compete with that by offering a
| better product and/or cheaper service, then all the more
| power to them.
|
| In this case, going off-grid is exactly that: private
| enterprise offering a more suitable alternative for this
| use case. In fact, it's the correct solution, because the
| public should not be required to subsidize the choice of an
| individual to live in an area not well served by power
| distribution infrastructure shared across many homes.
|
| It's just like how the government won't pay for paving a
| long driveway (AKA road) that connects a rural house to the
| main highway.
|
| Government should only get involved in subsidizing these
| things when the goal is to scale access to millions, i.e:
|
| - High impact nascent and early stage technology (i.e. EVs,
| renewables)
|
| - Generational scale investments in human capital and
| infrastructure that private industry is too risk averse to
| undertake.
|
| Subsidizing rural home builders to the tune of 80K does
| nothing for anyone except that home builder. It would be
| undoubtedly nice for them, but that's not a justification
| for allowing it.
| Teever wrote:
| > Government shouldn't be run for profit, frankly it should
| pay for the entire connection.
|
| Look, there's 'shouldn't be run for profit' and then
| there's 'Simply infeasible to do some things regardless of
| profit motive simply due reality.'
|
| Pull up a map of Ontario and pick some locations at random
| and then figure out the distance from those locations to
| the nearest town that likely has a utility tie in. Tell me
| the distance and what you think the cost per km would be in
| that kind of situation. Now tell me if the government
| should cover that kind of service for whoever wants it,
| whenever they want it, for free.
|
| You vastly underestimate the size of a Canadian province
| like Ontario and the costs of installing and maintaining
| infrastructure in a place with that kind of climate.
| newsclues wrote:
| Electric utilities in Ontario were public until the mid 90s
| when they started privatization.
| zz865 wrote:
| Its not about being run for profit. Its why should anyone
| build a house in the middle of nowhere and expect the govt
| to spend whatever it takes to get connected.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| This is how you destroy small farms.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Small farms presumably already have an electrical
| connection.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| True. This is a really a story of the "Fuck you, I got
| mine" generation.
|
| Power and phone was run for free pretty much everywhere.
| Now they want 80K for a line and a pole.
|
| This is the same story for internet access.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| So that's true, but also we don't need new small farms.
| iso1210 wrote:
| In general I'd expect it to be far more cost effective to
| enact a massive project to wire every house, than wire a
| single house
| boringg wrote:
| Have you seen the deficits the governments run?
|
| Should we foot the bill for connecting every rural home
| because people wanted to move out of the city -
| increasing the urban sprawl? Maybe if there 5-10 people
| at a time in batches they could do it at cost. . but
| custom jobs for every individual homeowner, come on be
| realistic instead of entitled.
| karteum wrote:
| > Its why should anyone build a house in the middle of
| nowhere and expect the govt to spend whatever it takes to
| get connected.
|
| But the article says "he expected to pay a few thousand
| dollars, given that the nearest pole was across the
| street, about 45 metres away. He was shocked to find out
| it would cost $80,000".
|
| So it's not the case of a house in the middle of
| nowhere...
| taneq wrote:
| Just playing devil's advocate here but maybe the whole
| line cost $400k and they could only charge the other 4
| houses on the street $80k each. The fact that the line's
| already run doesn't mean it's already paid for.
| ska wrote:
| Shouldn't that be built into the service fee though? It's
| not like this is a one time purchase...
| Gigachad wrote:
| And then we would be reading an article about people
| going off grid because their power cost is 4x average.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| That is what taxes are for. The government shouldnt be
| running a profit while providing basic services.
| sbarre wrote:
| That should be the cost of doing business when you're a
| government-sponsored monopoly that provides an essential
| service to your tax-paying citizens (not customers).
|
| It's literally what the government is for.
| giantg2 wrote:
| And where else should the government get that money then?
| rexreed wrote:
| Isn't that why the government has the power of taxation
| or the ability to levy fees? Not that I'm a fan of
| government reach, but if the single, monopoly, private
| corporation can't provide necessary services at a rate
| that their customers can afford, and there isn't any
| competition to "naturally" reduce rates, then this is a
| place where governments usually step in. They step in the
| form of subsidies and grants, the sources of income of
| which are usually taxation or fees levied to other
| constituents. And electricity, running water, and sewage
| are considered to be essential necessities, not luxuries.
| This is an area where monopolistic practices should have
| limits, even if such costs are "necessary". This is where
| governments have the positive ability to help.
| giantg2 wrote:
| My comment was based on the understanding was that the
| government was already involved with the company and
| proving subsidies already.
|
| "Isn't that why the government has the power of taxation
| or the ability to levy fees?"
|
| My point was that some taxation is based on usage, so
| charging those using the utility would make sense. This
| would mean still charging the people connected.
| Otherwise, who would the government tax to subsidize
| these other citizens?
| rexreed wrote:
| In this case, government grants to individual homeowners
| looking to connect to the public utility makes the most
| sense. It's also easy to quantify since you can see how
| many people are interested in connecting to the grid who
| aren't currently. Governments can find multiple ways to
| source funds for those grants. Homeowners would apply for
| those grants and get funds for the connection. If funds
| aren't provided directly they are often provided as
| credits against property tax. The gov pays the utility
| directly.
|
| I've seen it done this way for many different projects.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "My point was that some taxation is based on usage, so
| charging those using the utility would make sense"
|
| Thats literally the opposite of how taxes work. What you
| are describing is called charging the customer.
|
| Taxes are paid independant of usage, my taxes pay for
| schools wven if I dont have kids. Someone with 10 kids
| but less income pays less taxes for schools.
| ghaff wrote:
| >And electricity, running water, and sewage are
| considered to be essential necessities, not luxuries.
|
| In the US, the latter two are not broadly considered
| necessities in rural areas. The situation varies but
| wells, where possible, and septic systems are extremely
| common away from urban metros and towns of a certain
| size.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think you can still call them neccessary, but they just
| aren't public utilities in rural areas. If you have a
| well, you still have running water. If you have a septic
| system, the sewage has somewhere to go.
| ghaff wrote:
| Right. But the context was a comment to the effect of the
| government providing them at a reasonable price. Which,
| as you say, it commonly doesn't in many rural or semi-
| rural areas.
| rexreed wrote:
| I have both a well and septic, so I totally get it. But
| if you are connected to public water or public sewer,
| which often a municipal monopoly for good reasons, and
| you have limited other choices, the local government
| places restrictions on the cost of getting hooked up to
| public water and sewer if there are no alternatives.
|
| In any case, water and sewer are indeed considered
| necessities and you are unable to sell or convey a house
| in the state that I live without a functional water or
| sewage system, whether on public water/sewer or on well /
| septic. If you have a non-functioning well or non-
| functioning septic (outhouses are no longer allowed),
| then you can't sell your house, and also you are in risk
| of having your own house condemned. So these are indeed
| necessities.
| ghaff wrote:
| They're not considered necessities in the sense that the
| government has to, in general, provide you with a hookup
| at a reasonable cost. But, as you say, running water and
| proper sewage may be a zoning requirement to build a
| house and live on a property just as a variety of other
| things may be requirements.
| sbarre wrote:
| The government gets most of its money through taxes in
| Canada.
|
| Then they plan and redistribute that money to the
| agencies, corporations and departments that provide
| essential services for the population, and it gets spent
| on offering and managing those services. (Yes this is a
| simplified explanation)
|
| Not sure how it works where you live but I suspect it's
| probably similar.
| giantg2 wrote:
| My comment was based on the understanding was that the
| government was already involved with the company and
| proving subsidies already.
|
| My point was that some taxation is based on usage, so
| charging those using the utility would make sense. This
| would mean still charging the people connected.
| Otherwise, who would the government tax to subsidize
| these other citizens?
| neilwilson wrote:
| Government gets its money from spending the money.
|
| They don't use Loonies anywhere else.
|
| As my Canadian aunt says: money is made round to go
| around.
|
| The cost of hook up is the time of the people to do that
| job, which means they can't do anything else.
|
| Is Canada that short of electrical engineers that it
| can't maintain its current grid and add new connections?
| shoemakersteve wrote:
| It's more a problem of population density vs the cost of
| setting up and maintaining the infrastructure.
| Pxtl wrote:
| As an urban ratepayer in Ontario, I would very much not
| like my electrical fees to subsidize the recreationally
| remote, thanks. Rural/wilderness homes in Ontario already
| have heavily subsidized road infrastructure and get a
| larger cut of the carbon tax rebate per person. It's one
| thing to subsidize agricultural communities, but this is
| different. If you have some deep burning need to be a
| woodsman, more power to you, but that's your decision and
| your money.
|
| And looking at the article, if off-grid is more economic
| for the resident for that kind of life, then it's also
| more economical for the government. Everybody wins.
| Subsidizing that would eliminate that win/win.
|
| That said, as carbon pricing rises, the calculus on
| propane power may shift over time... which, I assume,
| will result in such residents loudly opposing carbon
| pricing.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Why do you expect the rural taxpayers to pay for
| urban/city only improvements like transit/subways or
| money to fight guns/gangs but balk at the thought of
| paying for electrical hookups in rural areas.
| sbarre wrote:
| > If you have some deep burning need to be a woodsman,
| more power to you, but that's your decision and your
| money.
|
| One could say the same if you choose to be a car-less
| urban dweller who relies on transit and high-density
| infrastructure.
|
| You can stereotype and caricature people both ways,
| neither helps the discussion.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "One could say the same if you choose to be a car-less
| urban dweller who relies on transit and high-density
| infrastructure.
|
| You can stereotype and caricature people both ways,
| neither helps the discussion."
|
| Car-less urban dweller pays ticket fees for transit, so
| the argument doesn't work.
|
| They aren't car-less because they are saving money - if
| you give everyone who uses public transport a car,
| gridlock will get so bad there will be bodies in the
| street.
| sbarre wrote:
| Sigh.. sure, you can find faults in anyone's examples if
| you're just interested in doing that instead of debating
| the broader point.
|
| Neither side can be diluted down to an anecdote, but I
| guess here we are all trying to do it anyways.
|
| My point was actually about the stereotyping and the
| painting of all rural dwellers as recreational, as if
| urban dwelling is the only valid choice and everyone else
| is intentionally choosing a lesser or more difficult
| lifestyle.
|
| The _overall_ point here is that connecting to any public
| utilities should not be made prohibitively expensive just
| because you live in rural areas.
| refurb wrote:
| So if Elon Musk decides to carve out a 1,000 acre compound
| 50km from the closest power source the government, no tax
| payers, should pay for the hundreds of thousands to connect
| him to the grid?
| ben_w wrote:
| Sure. There aren't enough crazy-rich people to be
| significant, just like at the other end there aren't
| enough people having 12 kids to cause significant expense
| to government child benefits schemes.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _There aren't enough crazy-rich people to be
| significant_
|
| In part because of these costs. If it were on the
| taxpayer to foot the hook-up bill, a home in the middle
| of the Grand Tetons would suddenly look much more
| attractive.
| ben_w wrote:
| The Google maps pictures if they place certainly look
| pretty, but you need to be pretty rich just to be able to
| live so far from where most of the work is.
|
| The land in a town or city is more expensive because of
| all the positive things such places bring outweighing all
| the negatives, even in the relatively cheap suburbs.
| Electricity (etc.) supply is part of that, sure, but far
| from the only thing.
| refurb wrote:
| It's an extreme example but there are actually thousands
| of people who would want utilities connected to remote
| locations. The land is cheap.
| ben_w wrote:
| Thousands, even hundreds of thousands, is essentially
| insignificant for the government of a nation of a third
| of a billion (as you said Musk, I'm thinking of the USA
| rather than Canada).
| sbarre wrote:
| Look there's _always_ an edge case that makes the
| generalized common good approach sound unreasonable.
|
| But in the end, you make the best rules you can that help
| the majority of people, and you accept that they will not
| be 100% ideal. If some people end up unfairly benefiting
| from it, so be it.
|
| Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| The main takeaway should be that being that far north is not a
| show stopper for going off grid with mostly solar, a bit of
| wind, and batteries in a very harsh climate with limited sun
| hours in the winter. Anything further south is probably a lot
| more effective and cheaper to run. But the point of the article
| is that people are doing this and are saving money doing it. Of
| course, that is indeed enabled by a monopolist really
| encouraging this by discouraging new customers with
| unreasonable fees. But that's the other point, being at the
| mercy of companies like that is not great financially and
| there's a point where it becomes simply not worth the money in.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| In Northern California, Sacramento & other counties subsidized
| utility hookups for wealthy residents (lots of local tech and
| flight from SanFran) who wanted to live further out in the
| rural El Dorado Hills area. This had long term consequences of
| the city always being in debt and having to sprawl to stay
| ahead.
|
| I see this as catering to the rich, who could have afforded it,
| simply because they wanted to live in palatial McMansions in
| the countryside and felt entitled to be accommodated.
|
| I don't think it should be the obligation of the county to
| provide utilities if people want to live outside city limits.
|
| If you want to live rural, you need to come up with the cash to
| get your utilities, otherwise too bad, live in the city limits.
|
| There are very good reasons why there is a thing called "city
| limits", this is one of them.
| [deleted]
| CosmicShadow wrote:
| My parents live 15 minutes out of town in North Western Ontario
| and they end up paying $1000-$2000/month in winter to Hydro One
| for heating, even though they have a well insulated house. You
| are pretty much screwed. They know people who got solar and the
| government promised them a certain rate, and then went back on
| their word and those people got boned as they could no longer
| afford their 40k installations over 25 years. I've never heard
| anything good about Hydro One.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Wood, oil or propane not an option? All should be cheaper
| than resistive heating.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Oil tanks are dangerous and unpleasant things to store and
| maintain, and very dependent on road viability for the once
| or twice yearly top up. I've known plenty of people in the
| North East that used oil for heating and they all hated it,
| and I bet it's easier to get an oil truck to top up your
| tank in Massachusetts or Maine than it is in Ontario. Oh,
| and the oil tank is an explosion hazard if you need to do
| any work on it.
|
| Wood heating is a lot of labor. It's sustainable if you
| have forest land, but still a ton of labor. Even pre-
| seasoned and delivered wood takes a lot of work. The
| general rule of thumb is that you need to envision
| literally filling your living space with wood in order to
| have enough to heat your home with wood burning stoves.
| Wood just doesn't put out the BTUs per pound that oil,
| coal, or other petroleum products do. Propane seems to be
| the go-to, but I know very little about storing and running
| your house off of it.
|
| I think in the future the answer is going to be geothermal,
| or "ground source heat pumps". They work like reversible AC
| units that use ground temp water to extract heat from.
| They're more efficient than regular ACs, allowing you to
| heat your home with ~1/3 the electricity of regular
| resistance heating, but the installation costs in suburban
| areas are extreme due to the deep wells needed. If you live
| in rural areas though you can use shallower trenches to lay
| the tubing down below the frost line, making this a much
| more viable choice.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Sounds like they're quite happy with the value provided
| by $1500-$2000/month from heating electrically.
|
| Alas, if your home is well insulated, a newer wood stove
| should do the trick, but if moving it from a stack
| outside and cleaning ash is too much, I get it, stay
| electric.
|
| Propane is delivered just like oil, but can be stored
| outside. Usually you get them refilled more often, so if
| road access is an issue, it's not a great primary.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Propane freezes. It takes some extreme temperatures to do
| so, but it does so at temperatures experienced in rural
| Ontario.
| p1mrx wrote:
| Propane freezes at 86 K; the lowest recorded temperature
| on Earth was 184 K.
|
| There are a variety of things that can go wrong at low
| temperatures, like what happened with natural gas in
| Texas, but the propane itself isn't going to freeze.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| As long as your tank is big enough, yes. The issue is
| propane is stored as a liquid, and when you draw it, it
| boils (and it must boil) but the evaporation makes the
| tank colder than ambient.
|
| Boiling point of propane is -42C.
|
| When it's -30 and you're drawing a lot of propane...
| yeah, your evaporation rate may suffer. Interestingly, a
| stiff wind is helpful here to warm the tank up to -30 (if
| it isn't buried in wind-blocking and insulating snow...)
|
| Propane tank heaters are a thing for this reason.
|
| The issue in Texas was that you have regulators and
| pressure reducing valves, but going from high pressure to
| low pressure is cooling, leading to frozen
| valves/regulators because it wasn't designed for liquid
| infiltration _and_ the cold temps generated.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Probably less "happy with the value" and more "the
| capital costs of installing something more efficient are
| too high".
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| I think you're overstating the danger of oil tanks. You
| mention explosion risks, that's a very rare occurrence
| and could happen with gas or propane too. The real
| downsides of oil are the high prices and the carbon
| footprint.
|
| Wood is at least much cheaper and has charming appeal,
| gas is cheaper too but not available in many districts.
| Propane is extremely cost ineffective for heating, it'd
| be much better to use any other type of heating if
| possible.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Propane is still more cost effective than electric
| resistive heating 99% of the time.
| CosmicShadow wrote:
| My parents installed Geothermal a few years ago, which
| was expensive, like 30k I think, and it's helped, but not
| a ton as the line is still going under a frozen river in
| the winter, so the prices I quoted above are after
| geothermal. I think I saw a comment thread a few months
| back about how a lot of people got taken by the promises
| of geothermal and how they don't really do much for
| people in cold areas. It's great in the summer mind you.
| My buddy who works for Hydro One said a lot of folks end
| up paying the same or more after the install of
| geothermal because of how cold it is, which is really
| unfortunate. I looked at a big, nicer house in Nova
| Scotia that had dual geothermal and I was just drooling
| until I got my hands on the heating bills and was so
| confused why it was still so expensive.
|
| They don't have wood burning and they are too old to be
| able to handle it anyway, you'd die from all the wood
| you'd have to cut and move and deal with. They said oil
| wasn't viable, and I don't think their house is setup for
| it anyway. They are worried about snow removal where they
| live as it's just too much for them now and it's so easy
| to get stranded for days, even though the city does
| eventually plow that road.
|
| Where they live it's regularly -30 to -40c in the winter.
| They were snowbirds until Covid hit.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| > Last summer, Timmermans's two radio stations: Great Lakes
| Country 103.1 and Hits 100.7 went live from their new home --
| in Little Current, Ont., about 90 kilometres southwest of
| Sudbury -- the first off-grid stations in Canada.
|
| the guy was running two radio stations; i expect they quoted
| the price like it was a business/commercial line
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| While a bit interesting how he brings it all together for the
| setup, I could care less about these rural people who decide to
| live in Minden or whatever and complain about expenses. This is
| not Toronto news CBC. These people are reasonably well off and
| choosing to live outside of the city where more and more of the
| majority live and we've got bigger issues closer to home like
| affordability and infrastructure etc etc. Bah.
| ipaddr wrote:
| You do realize more and more people are finding it too
| difficult to live in big cities like Toronto and are forced
| into much smaller cities/towns/hamlets where these are issues.
| Paying $2,000 a month rent is difficult for the average person
| making minimum wage. The affordability paradox is forcing young
| people and young couples into rural off the grid properties
| because few will ever afford a home in Toronto. Part of the
| solution is to encourage more rural density. This is an issue
| that you should support.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| fairplay - the people in this article and the other one that
| inspired it (the other Minden guy or whatever) do not seem
| like young people struggling with the affordability of the
| city.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| How well do solar panels work "north of Toronto" in the
| wintertime? They get what, maybe 8 hours of daylight and at that
| the sun is at a prettly low angle.
| deadalus wrote:
| >Hydro One, which distributes electricity for most rural
| customers in the province, eventually reduced the cost to
| $25,000. It was still too much, according to Timmermans.
|
| >Combined, the system( wind-and-solar array) produces eight
| kilowatt hours -- more than enough to run his offices, radio
| studios, the central air conditioning and the servers that keep
| his internet customers connected year 'round, he says.
|
| >It cost him $23,000.
| mulmen wrote:
| The next sentence:
|
| > "And then on top of that, to pay, you know, an electric bill,
| probably at around four to five hundred dollars a month for the
| rest of my life and only increasing. I thought, well, now's the
| time to go off-grid."
|
| So what's the total cost of ownership for his system? Does it
| have $400.00/mo of upkeep?
| marvin wrote:
| The $23,000 probably have a capital cost of $30 per month or
| so, and if they're written off to nothing in 20 years (and
| the acquisition cost isn't lower by then, which it will),
| that's another $100 per month.
|
| So that leaves $270 per month for maintenance, emergency
| supply and other upkeep. Seems completely reasonable that the
| actual costs will be lower.
| koheripbal wrote:
| This is an apples to oranges comparison since there is no
| way he'd have anywhere near the same uptime as on-grid
| power.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| My rural Ontario cousins would like to chat with you
| about grid up time in rural Ontario.
| SamBam wrote:
| The top comment on this post [1] says the exact opposite,
| that the reason they are off-grid is precisely for the
| reliability.
|
| 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28998847
| giantg2 wrote:
| How did you come to that conclusion?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Indeed, his uptime will be many orders of magnitude
| better than what the Ontario grid can provide.
|
| It's an apples to oranges comparison specifically because
| it is the lines (and not the generating capacity) that
| fails very, very regularly in rural Ontario.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| And note that even with a connection fee of zero, his
| autonomous setup would start to pay for itself after four
| years, due to no longer having to pay power bill of $400-$500 a
| month. Thats assuming zero maintenance costs so not quite
| correct, but it can't be too far off. It really is a no-
| brainer.
| albatrosstrophy wrote:
| Also he mentioned they have to run on propane in winter. I
| wonder how much would that cost.
| voisin wrote:
| Most people in Canada use natural gas (if the network exists
| near one's home) or propane (if not) for heat in the winter.
| Electric is considered too expensive. I think things like
| electric heat pumps are more cost effective nowadays to
| something like -5C, but alas, much of Canada is far colder
| for many months.
| xavieralexandre wrote:
| Dig a few meters and your soil will be 13C, a great
| starting point for your heat pump.
| jacquesm wrote:
| About the same as electric, but a bit more hassle if it can't
| be delivered by truck. The most economic option is an outdoor
| woodstove, about $10K to install a big one and after that you
| need to keep it fed, a heat pump is another viable
| alternative. Another option is fuel oil (essentially:
| diesel), in an oil burning furnace.
|
| The best way to cut your heating bill in Northern Canada is
| insulation, wooden houses are pretty good at this to begin
| with, you can get pretty close to neutrality by some solid
| engineering (South facing windows, take advantage of thermal
| mass), then you only need to add additional heat besides what
| you already generate when cooking on long stretches of
| overcast days, which don't happen all that often there.
| bregma wrote:
| Where I live (rural Ontario), propane costs somewhere around
| $2500/year for heat. Hydro costs about $4000. The sane people
| stick to wood, which if you cut and split it yourself will
| keep to under $1000. We have disconnected all the electric
| heaters in my house (except for the newly-installed radiant-
| heat floor in the bathroom, because it's a luxury I'm willing
| to splurge on) and only fire up the second woodstove for
| those weeks it drops below -20.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Have a look at heatpumps, you may end up with a very
| pleasant surprise, assuming your lot is large enough. Even
| shallow grids to really well.
| bregma wrote:
| Heat pumps don't work so well without some way to
| circulate the heat inside the house and are useless
| without electricity. I have a large acreage but the water
| table is under 250' of granite, and there are no ducts in
| my house. I would be very pleasantly surprised indeed if
| I could harness geothermal without electricity, extreme
| home renovations, and $100k in well-drilling costs.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ah that makes it a lot harder, if not impossible. Too
| bad!
| birdman3131 wrote:
| They are in the north. Heat pumps are worthless below a
| certain point. I think around 10-20F.
| jacquesm wrote:
| They work just fine, you're just going to go a bit deeper
| then. I put a thermal sensor down an old well head in mid
| winter, it was -20 Celsius at the surface and a 'balmy'
| 12 degrees at 10 meters down. That gradient will allow
| you to do a lot of good stuff if you use a freeze proof
| working fluid for your heatpump.
| flyingfences wrote:
| Ground-source heat pumps take advantage of the fact that
| the earth stays at reasonable temperatures below the
| frost line.
| ericd wrote:
| I'm guessing in-ground heat pumps with their heat
| exchanger liquid lines below the frost line still work...
| xavieralexandre wrote:
| Wouldn't you be able to have a heat floor heated by your
| wood? If wood is cheap where you live heating water with it
| is a nice upgrade from a basic wood stove.
| bregma wrote:
| Yes, it would be possible to use the heated cistern water
| from the wood cookstove but that would mean running
| insulated pipes through the house, using electric pumps
| to move the water, and additional maintenance of all that
| especially when it drops below freezing inside the house.
| Besides, the joy of the electric radiant heating in the
| bathroom is best experienced briefly first thing in the
| morning before going to rouse the fires. The older I get
| the more I'm willing to splurge on a few luxuries like
| that.
| xavieralexandre wrote:
| I'm currently renovating a house and we live with a
| single wood (pellet) stove for the whole building. Living
| in a 16C home is surprisingly fine but the worst part is
| indeed the cold bathroom in the morning.
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