[HN Gopher] Where did the Carter White House's solar panels go? ...
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Where did the Carter White House's solar panels go? (2010)
Author : rndmize
Score : 67 points
Date : 2023-09-15 22:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
| anonu wrote:
| We had solar-thermal panels on the roof of our house in Beirut in
| 1995... they're still going strong - just need to wipe them of
| dust every now and then. Hands down one of the best home
| appliance investments - especially in a country where electricity
| is sporadic.
|
| The reason they haven't picked up in the US is because
| infrastructure is good - electricity delivery is reliable. It's
| much cheaper to install an electrical or gas water heater rather
| than the complicated plumbing needed to add solar-thermal.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Pretty much. All in all they've been a very poor investment for
| home owners in America. At best you break even after ~20 years
| if they're even still functional.
|
| Could change as tech improves but as of today they are
| pointless for most people.
| 15457345234 wrote:
| > At best you break even after ~20 years if they're even
| still functional.
|
| This is misinformation.
|
| I searched on google, bing and Yandex and all the results I
| found implied that breakeven would occur substantially before
| 20 years. The lowest breakeven time figure I found quoted was
| 5 years. The usual quoted breakeven ranges were, I'd say,
| 6-12.
| Kerb_ wrote:
| Source?
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| You're talking about PV, not solar thermal. Break even for
| solar thermal can be one year.
| reportingsjr wrote:
| Even for PV, most payback periods are under 10 years at
| this point. In sunnier areas payback periods can be just a
| few years.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| IIUC investing in PV is actually more efficient for
| heating/cooling than solar-thermal, because you can use them to
| run a heat pump, and heat pumps have something like 400%
| efficiency (i.e. with 1 kWh of electricity they can pump 4 kWh
| of heat).
|
| Here in the Netherlands government is now trying to ramp down
| PV subsidies, because PV has been so wildly successful that
| electricity spot prices are actually negative at peak sun
| (midday). (Even without subsidies I believe the panels are now
| cheap enough to be worth the investment, though.)
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| > Here in the Netherlands government is now trying to ramp
| down PV subsidies, because PV has been so wildly successful
| that electricity spot prices are actually negative at peak
| sun
|
| Which means people should start buying batteries. Pull in
| power during midday at a profit, and then send it back out in
| the evening at a profit. I'm curious how long it'd take to
| pay back the price of a battery.
| sneak wrote:
| I just a few days ago watched a really good fairly deep dive
| video about the US' historical reasons behind this:
|
| https://youtu.be/fAyY0kGmgmc
| neonate wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20230915220736/https://www.scient...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > By 1986, the Reagan administration had gutted the research and
| development budgets for renewable energy at the then-fledgling
| U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) and eliminated tax breaks for the
| deployment of wind turbines and solar technologies--recommitting
| the nation to reliance on cheap but polluting fossil fuels, often
| from foreign suppliers.
|
| Crazy. You see all these wind turbines all across the U.S. If not
| spread across the plains or along foothills, they're being
| shipped along the highways one blade at a time. I look at the
| transformation going on and figure we could have had this tech in
| the 80's. What happened in the last four decades? Talk about a
| lost generation.
|
| It was so weird to grow up in the 70's when they were teaching us
| the Metric System in public schools, when National Parks were
| adding meters, kilometers to signage. Reusable spacecraft,
| renewable energy, (and nuclear energy), computers, micro-
| electronics....
|
| To be sure there were warnings of an ominous, overcrowded,
| polluted future ("Soylent Green", "Silent Running", just to call
| out a couple films of the era) but as a kid I was infused with
| the optimism of the time. Buckminster Fuller, NASA ... even the
| hippies and their communes.
|
| I think I still live in that world in my head. I hope maybe I
| have expressed a part of that optimism to my kids as I raised
| them.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > I still live in that world in my head. I hope maybe I have
| expressed a part of that optimism to my kids as I raised them.
|
| You have been good to them, then. Those hopes were grown by a
| generation of survivors, thinkers, and humanists who expressed
| humanist principles in their work. They were agents of change.
| Knowledge, compassion, and fairness have been almost completely
| replaced in public discourse by cruel raving and demagoguery.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| Metrification was also killed by Reagan.
| akira2501 wrote:
| What, fundamentally, would be actually different if the US
| was "metric?" Why should a federal government enforce one
| particular standard or another?
| throwawa14223 wrote:
| I really like that the US hasn't adopted the metric system.
| I like the idea that humanity has some redundancy even in
| something like a system of weights and measures. It seems
| like the world would lose something intangible if we all
| went with the same one. Like if we all spoke the same
| language or had the same government.
| defrost wrote:
| The official US foot has been based on a metric measure
| for more than a century now though: The
| Mendenhall Order marked a decision to change the
| fundamental standards of length and mass of the United
| States from the customary standards based on those of
| England to metric standards. It was issued
| on April 5, 1893, by Thomas Corwin Mendenhall,
| superintendent of the United States Coast and Geodetic
| Survey, with the approval of the United States Secretary
| of the Treasury, John Griffin Carlisle.
|
| At this point every US unit of measure (length, mass,
| volume, temp, second, etc) is defined in terms of a
| metric fundemental.
|
| The US public are really just pretending that they don't
| use metric.
| throwawa14223 wrote:
| It seems like it should be a priority to fix that.
| stonogo wrote:
| Why?
| pstuart wrote:
| Redundancy is normally a good thing, but being that
| weights and measures about communicating physical facts
| accurately and broadly, moving to metric seems like the
| most reasonable choice.
|
| It's not clear how this "redundancy" your aiming for
| would benefit us.
| blooalien wrote:
| Easier interactions around measurements when communicating
| with nearly the entire rest of the world for starters.
| Also, pretty much all of science is metric measurement
| these days, so there's that. We could also do away with the
| confusion of using two entirely different measurement
| systems here as we currently do. Milk often comes in gallon
| jugs but soda in 1 and 2 liter bottles for one example.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| It is literally in the constitution.
|
| >To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign
| Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
| the_third_wave wrote:
| The Mars Climate Observer would have been observing the
| climate on Mars instead of becoming a crater [1] to be
| observed by future Mars satellites.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Caus
| e_of_...
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Metrification was dying, and the plug was pulled by the
| Reagan Admin. Biggest blow was probably the abandonment of
| converting highway signs to km in 1977.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1977/06/30/metr.
| ..
| shagie wrote:
| The biggest blow was the British privateers... yes, the
| British are why the US isn't on Metric.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
| way/2017/12/28/574044232...
|
| https://www.military.com/history/why-pirates-might-be-
| reason...
|
| > Thomas Jefferson, secretary of state in 1794, was eagerly
| awaiting a meeting with French physician and botanist
| Joseph Dombey. The Frenchman was supposed to meet Jefferson
| in Philadelphia to discuss a couple of critical
| international trade issues between their governments.
|
| > He was also going to revolutionize the way Americans did
| business.
|
| > But instead of meeting Jefferson in Philadelphia, Dombey
| found himself in the Caribbean, where his ship was being
| boarded by British privateers. Upon learning he was a
| Frenchman, and a famous scientist at that, he was captured
| and taken prisoner.
|
| https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/pirates-
| caribbean-...
|
| > The marauders now swarming Dombey's ship were a
| particular breed of pirate: British privateers--the state-
| sponsored terrorists of the 18th century. These waterborne
| gangs had the tacit approval of the government in London to
| harass and plunder other countries' maritime commerce and
| keep part of the spoils as their profit.
|
| > After seizing control of the ship, the pirates came
| across a sailor speaking Spanish with a curiously French
| accent--Joseph Dombey. A French physician and botanist
| acting under orders from the French government, Dombey had
| left the port city of Le Havre, France, weeks earlier for
| Philadelphia and the meeting with Jefferson, the United
| States' first secretary of state and future president. But
| storms had pushed Dombey's ship off course and deep into
| pirate territory.
|
| > ...
|
| > Some historians view this event as a tragic missed
| opportunity whose consequences we are still living with
| today. When the U.S. became an independent nation, it
| inherited an inconsistent collection of traditional British
| weights and measures. Congress was aware of the flaws with
| its British measures, and a congressional committee was
| formed to recommend solutions. Thomas Jefferson, an admirer
| of French scientific ideas, lobbied for a measurement
| system similar to that of France. But Congress didn't adopt
| it, and the British-influenced system took hold in the U.S.
| instead. However, If pirates hadn't intercepted Dombey on
| his way to Philadelphia, the situation might be very
| different today. As historian Andro Linklater writes in his
| book Measuring America,
|
| > "The sight [in Congress] of those two copper objects
| [Dombey's meter and grave], so easily copied and sent out
| to every state in the Union, together with the weighty
| scientific arguments supporting them, might well have
| clarified the minds of senators and representatives alike.
| And today the U.S. might not be the last country in the
| world to resist the metric system."
| hindsightbias wrote:
| I don't think anyone not from that generation can understand
| how much we're still living in Reagan's world.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I like Reagan's world better than Carter's world of hour long
| gas lines and "Malaise Forever" stagflation.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| [flagged]
| ok_dad wrote:
| Japan seems to be doing fine with decades of stagflation.
| Everyone is pretty much taken care of there. Meanwhile, the
| USA has people dying of diabetes because they cannot afford
| medicine. I also think if we used trains and other mass
| transit more, we would be in a better position, like Japan.
|
| I would prefer the stagflation and trains, personally.
| simfree wrote:
| The birth rate is cratering, people are eschewing dating,
| and many live meaker lifestyles than their own parents
| since they cannot afford to live as well as their parents
| did.
|
| Rail, healthcare and rent prices might be bright spots in
| Japan, but I hardly would consider a regression in real
| wages and living standards to be "doing fine". Your not
| doing fine if you can't afford to support yourself and a
| dependent.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > I would prefer the stagflation
|
| Biden's your man, then.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > people dying of diabetes because they cannot afford
| medicine
|
| That's a problem stemming from government regulation that
| prevents competition in diabetes insulin.
|
| > trains
|
| I'd prefer trains, too. But the government makes it far
| too expensive to build lines and operate them.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Your train of replies reminds me of a canard I saw once
| on Twitter, can't remember by who: "Everything is
| monocausal and the cause the the thing I care most
| about." Your thing is regulation, apparently.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Your thing is regulation
|
| Regulation affects everybody a great deal, whether you're
| aware of it or not. In this case, insulin regulation has
| created a single supplier and prevented the market from
| working.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/gdp-per-
| capi...
|
| Japan per capita GDP was 44k in 1995 and 33k in 2022.
|
| People die in of diabetes in the US because they eat too
| much bad food.
| beached_whale wrote:
| Thi is objectively and grossly wrong. Diabetes is genetic
| and most of those you hear about rationing got it as a
| child because of genetics(type-1), not because they over-
| ate. Also, elderly get type-2 diabetes without being
| overweight. It's statements like you made the perpetuate
| the victom blaming of diabetes.
| thowfaraway wrote:
| Falsehoods like that are 100x worse than the price of
| insulin. 90-95% of diabetes in the US is Type 2, and it
| is crap diet that causes it.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/basics/type2.html
|
| And if you want cheap insulin, you can buy it for $25 at
| Walmart.
| beached_whale wrote:
| $75 for their Novolog analog. Almost no one should use
| NPH, it's generally terrible and costs the same as we pay
| in Canada for the name brand Novo insulin aspart(It's not
| subsidized).
|
| The issue is people, generally, see diabetic and don't
| ask, just assume. Millions are not type-2, many are due
| to pregnancies, old age too, or damage from disease. But
| even with obeisity/inactivity it is a risk factor and
| generally has a genetic component too. Plus, one the beta
| cells are gone, they are gone.
| WalterBright wrote:
| From the NIH:
|
| "You are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes if you
| are not physically active and are overweight or have
| obesity. Extra weight sometimes causes insulin resistance
| and is common in people with type 2 diabetes. The
| location of body fat also makes a difference."
|
| https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-
| information/diabetes/overvi...
| beached_whale wrote:
| https://diabetes.org/diabetes/genetics-diabetes
| selectodude wrote:
| That's an impressively reductive way to describe the 1979
| oil crisis.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Want proof? The very first act Reagan did in office was
| to sign an Executive Order that repealed all the oil and
| gas price controls.
|
| The gas lines disappeared literally overnight! And I mean
| literally in the literal sense of the word. It was
| amazing. Poof! I remember the next day well. I pulled
| into a gas station right up to a pump, filled up, and
| drove home. Aaaahhh! Gas lines never returned.
|
| Reductive, true. Accurate, absolutely.
|
| Carter just didn't have a clue.
| selectodude wrote:
| Carter was running against traitorous Americans.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-
| carter-...
| pstuart wrote:
| This is not news, and certainly is in character with that
| administrations.
|
| The failure of your dialog here is further evidence that
| partisanship does not serve us well.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I let my subscription to the NYT lapse because of their
| unrelenting propaganda.
|
| In any case, Carter's ineptness at foreign policy left an
| opening for his opponents. Not that that justifies his
| opponents, but it's still ineptness.
|
| P.S. Carter is a nice guy and well-meaning, and I like
| him a lot. I'm glad he's been given a long life. He was
| just not a good President.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _What happened in the last four decades? Talk about a lost
| generation._
|
| Neoliberalism and the Chicago school of economics happened.
| bdcravens wrote:
| "Hippy", "green", "woke": as time goes on, names change, but
| the battles of us vs them don't. There's a lot of partisan
| discussion around the idea of pushing back and "reopening" the
| spigot of oil and pushing back on EVs, for example.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It's too bad, I hoped EVs were one thing everyone could agree
| on. Maybe because it's good for the environment. Or because
| it's good for energy independence.
| mlyle wrote:
| In addition to other objections, there's the people who
| think that EVs don't hit every use case yet, and they use a
| lot of rare earth metals, etc... and that you can get 90%
| of the benefit with a PHEV (and build/sell a lot more PHEVs
| with current resources).
|
| IMO, we're going to need a lot of different approaches to
| solve climate. EVs, PHEVs, reduction of use of single-
| occupant vehicles, more transit, more biking, more e-bikes,
| blah blah blah.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Perhaps Elon can be the bridge there, since he's seen as a
| bit of a free speech messiah by the right.
|
| If nothing else, I'd think the "red-blooded" crowd would
| love the speed that EVs give you.
| LastTrain wrote:
| That is his whole play - more than anything, US
| conservatives want liberals to be humiliated and angry,
| and Elon delivers, and that is the ONLY way owning an EV
| can be palatable to that crowd.
| lotsoweiners wrote:
| I think that is just what you're being led to believe. I
| meet pretty hardcore conservatives all the time who have
| Teslas or other EVs. Hell, I can walk to the end of my
| street and there is a front door covered with a large
| Trump flag that has 2 EVs, a Model 3 and some Ford, in
| the garage.
| pbj1968 wrote:
| They will convert at precisely the moment it makes
| economic sense.
| bdcravens wrote:
| There are those who may not - those who see the EV
| subsidies as a symptom of the "woke mindvirus" and see
| fighting it as a matter of fighting for their overall way
| of life. They see the mandates some states are pushing as
| an assault on freedom, and a communist incursion, and the
| use of petroleum as a patriotic exercise.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| Remove the partisan blather and you're on to something.
| It is the mandates, the top-down control based on
| incomplete and often false premises and the holier-than-
| thou attitude that drives people away from these "moon
| shot projects". Once EVs make economical and practical
| sense people will flock to them but that will take a
| while a while for many people, especially those with
| longer commutes and those who live in the more
| northerly/wintry areas. If you live in places where the
| sun always shines and have the space for a good-sized
| solar array it already makes sense, elsewhere - not so
| much.
| LastTrain wrote:
| Yeah... because f350s make so much economic sense...
| bdcravens wrote:
| I don't really believe it, but I wouldn't be entirely
| shocked if we learn MAGA Elon was just a persona who
| adopted to win over the relatively untapped market.
| water-data-dude wrote:
| I'm really torn on EVs now because of all the freaking data
| collection (every new car, not just EVs). I want to do what
| I can to reduce how much I'm contributing to climate
| change, but I still might get another old car when this one
| goes because I don't want to be spied on.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| If you're into building things yourself you could convert
| an older ICE car to an electric by swapping out the
| engine for an electric motor plus the necessary
| electronics, removing the tank and replacing it with
| batteries and adding more batteries wherever they fit -
| you'll need them to get a reasonable range. Some
| companies make kits to do this, otherwise there are
| plenty of DIY forums where these types of activities are
| discussed.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _removing the tank and replacing it with batteries and
| adding more batteries wherever they fit - you 'll need
| them to get a reasonable range_
|
| Is this actually doable? I thought in modern EVs, the
| battery takes up half the chassis. In a "retrofitted" EV,
| you'll have lots of space (and therefore battery
| capacity) taken up by mechanical systems which are
| essential for a central motor, but relatively useless if
| you could just use multiple electric motors.
| Tanoc wrote:
| There's a subset of the anti-EV crowd that's against EVs
| not because they're brodozer drivers, but because they
| realize individual vehicle ownership is the other half of
| the problem. EVs still cost resources that are harmful to
| harvest outsized relative to their use thanks to strip
| mining and the chemical process used to separate cobalt
| from manganese at a mass scale. Those people, myself
| included, believe that mass transit needs to make a
| resurgence instead of everyone switching to EVs. I even get
| annoyed seeing EV "bicycles" that weigh as much as the
| riders and cost as much as a scooter because I think
| they're wastes of resources used to dodge taxes and
| pedestrian right of way laws regarding motorcycles.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > and the chemical process used to separate cobalt from
| manganese at a mass scale
|
| Cobalt isn't necessary to build li-ion batteries,
| considering that there are mainstream chemistries like
| LFP which eschew cobalt entirely.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| I'm very pro ebike. But some American classes of ebikes
| are just electric motorcycles with a set of crank arms
| for show. Pedelec bikes are ebikes. Everything else is
| with a throttle is a scooter
|
| Cycling has more benefits than replacing cars. It
| connects us with joyful movement. And the infrastructure
| is cheaper to build and extend compared to railways.
| aaomidi wrote:
| I wish instead of the subsidies we shat out for EVs, we
| did them for ebikes instead.
| Tanoc wrote:
| I'm not against bicycles and electric bikes. I'm against
| "not" electric motorcycles. If your e-bike goes beyond
| 20MPH under power and goes beyond twenty miles in range
| then the primary mode of locomotion isn't supposed to be
| the pedals. The pedals at that point are a backup, like a
| reverse moped.
|
| Ideally we'd return back to the 1890s-1910s with public
| transport consisting of fixed line trolleys or light rail
| covering distances larger than five or six blocks while
| walking or bicycling covers distances less than that.
| That's where EV technology would be ideal because you
| could run a combination of overhead, third rail, and
| battery power depending on available infrastructure and
| space, all using the same cars city or town wide.
| ferongr wrote:
| >It connects us with joyful movement
|
| This means nothing.
| marssaxman wrote:
| It meant something to me; I could certainly say that I
| felt connected with joyful movement when I test-rode an
| ebike last week. My partner and I were all smiles
| afterward.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I work with a lot of relatively conservative folks. The
| F-150 Lightning is making huge waves in that crowd, in a
| positive way. One of them owns a landscaping company, and
| just swapped out their order of a half dozen regular trucks
| over to the electric ones. FWIW.
| beached_whale wrote:
| I wonder how much not needing a generator helps too.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| It's a big deal to many of them. For the landscapers in
| particular, being able to fast charge the pro-level
| electric packs for leafblowers, weed whackers, etc in the
| frunk is a big part of it as well. From what I
| understand, there are contracts here in the Bay Area that
| pay more if the landscaping crew is electrified.
| [deleted]
| lotsoweiners wrote:
| Is woke really the modern version of hippie/green? I feel
| like a lot of people myself included can support and
| appreciate environmental issues but have no interest in this
| woke culture nonsense.
| [deleted]
| jncfhnb wrote:
| That's largely because woke culture is not a real thing. It
| is vastly inflated by the same folks that said similar
| things about hippies. The extreme views that are given the
| most attention are fringe and not popular.
| ttymck wrote:
| Is "green" really the modern version of hippie? I can
| support free expression and tolerance, but forcing me to
| stop using my gas car is nonsense.
| trilbyglens wrote:
| Hippies were much more about social inclusion than
| environmental issues though at the time. So I think yes the
| woke movement is definitely a descent of the hippy
| movement. Wokism has a stronger focus on racial elements,
| bit that was definitely present in the 60s too, just less
| militant in the hippy movement than it was in the black
| power movement. Possibly you could argue that wokism fuses
| black power and hippyism.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Hippies were much more about social inclusion than
| environmental issues though at the time.
|
| I would argue that they weren't, as a movement, about
| either, but more inward-directed self-discovery. They
| were contemporaries with both movements for social
| inclusion (the civil rights movement) and the beginnings
| of environmentalism as a mass social movement, and were
| distinct from both of those kinds of activist movements.
| They had more in common and probably more overlap with
| the environmentalist movement (like the hippies, a
| predominantly white, middle-class movement.)
|
| "Wokism" isn't an actual movement, its just a replacement
| name for "political correctness" used as a label for same
| right-wing general-purpose boogeyman that PC served as a
| label for from the late 1970s until the recent
| replacement with first and briefly "critical race theory"
| and, when that proved a bit cumbersome as a generic
| label, "wokism".
| Anon_Forever wrote:
| >"Hippy", "green", "woke"
|
| I wouldn't add "woke" to that list. "Woke" people would get
| rid of solar panels and/or better net metering because solar
| panels are "inequitable" [0].
|
| Also: https://calssa.org/blog/2021/6/5/debunking-the-cost-
| shift-de...
|
| [0] https://www.nrdc.org/experts/mohit-chhabra/four-point-
| guide-...
| stonogo wrote:
| I'm unable to interpret the text in either of your
| references in a manner which supports your "get rid of
| solar panels" claim.
| elihu wrote:
| The thing I didn't know until I came across a similar article
| posted here on HN a few years ago (maybe it was the same one?) is
| that the White House panels weren't photovoltaic, they were
| solar-thermal for heating hot water.
|
| Basically, Carter wasn't deploying some cutting edge and
| extravagantly expensive (at the time) technology that could be
| deployed as a high-profile technical demo but not actually
| economical to use, he was deploying a cheap, practical technology
| that could be used on most houses, during warm months at least.
| WalterBright wrote:
| There were many books and how-to guides at the time to add
| solar water heaters. Anybody who wanted one could install one.
| I know people who did. They didn't need permission from Reagan.
|
| Few wanted one.
| bombcar wrote:
| They still can be installed today, the sun hasn't changed
| much.
|
| And still they're rarely installed. I knew more people in the
| 90s who were ripping them out or leaving them dry (they were
| popular for pool heating in some areas) than installing them.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The people I know who had them complained about maintenance
| problems, and dealing with freezing weather.
|
| I've considered it several times, and it came down to it
| being too much work.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, having large amounts of flowing and standing water
| on your roof is basically a recipe for maintenance
| headaches.
|
| PV is much simpler, and if it stops working you can just
| ignore it.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Apparently Carter's solar heater leaked, too :-(
|
| I once designed a solar swimming pool heater that had no
| moving parts and required no maintenance. I never built
| it because I didn't have a pool.
| bombcar wrote:
| One fun thing about all this is learning that "no moving
| parts" is a polite fiction when you have water at various
| temperatures over long distances (and solar heaters are
| long if unwrapped).
|
| Temperature changes can cause glued pipes to move enough
| that they become unglued. What fun!
|
| Modern PEX offers significant advantages there (hundreds
| of feet with no joints).
| WalterBright wrote:
| A good design allows for expansion and contraction with
| temperature and stress, but those aren't usually
| considered moving parts.
|
| I once had a car that had aluminum cylinder heads and
| bronze valve guides. The valve guides were a press fit
| with no keepers. Aluminum expands at twice the rate as
| bronze with temperature. So, when the engine got hot, the
| valve guides fell out.
|
| Fun!
| swasheck wrote:
| i grew up in central florida in the 80s and we had solar-
| thermal water heating. we were not wealthy (dad was a
| construction worker and mom was an odd-job secretary) but my
| friends were all mystified by the things. i remember climbing
| up on our roof giving tours.
|
| something really did a number on society and it politicized so
| many things that needn't be politicized
| Loughla wrote:
| So my grandfather turns 101 this year. He's kind of an ass in
| his old age, and wildly out of touch with the world. Like
| shockingly out of touch.
|
| But he talks about politics from back in the day. Everything
| has always been super politicized. Everything. But our
| memories are short as a country.
| hattmall wrote:
| But what does he talk about though? There have always been
| super political things, certainly, but the scope of what
| was political vs common sense has had a huge shift.
| mlyle wrote:
| Things have always been politicized heavily... But that
| doesn't mean that things aren't significantly worse than
| the recent past.
|
| We actually had a political landscape from the 30's to the
| early 90's that was much less polarized than the rest of
| our history. We're returning back to where we were in the
| 1800's.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| There are polls, in the US at least, asking the same exact
| questions gong back I believe half a century or more. It is
| very clear from these polls that this is the most
| poltically polarized time in politics in decades.
|
| It's not just recency bias - things are really screwed up.
|
| Why (my opinion) one side started caring more about winning
| than any of their own positions. That then devolved into
| only caring if the other side loses regardless of what the
| policy is.
|
| If a party's main focus is the other side loses rather than
| to successfully govern - you end up here. And the fact they
| more or less admit it, and people jump to justify it shows
| how far things have fallen.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Sadly, I read often that at this point, PV is so good that it
| makes more sense to install PV panels and power a water heater
| via electricity. I don't want to believe it, but it's been said
| often enough that I am starting to do so.
| thsksbd wrote:
| PV can beat solar thermal once a heat pump is used.
|
| However that ignores the externalities of PV and heat pumps
| manufacture, replacement and disposal so I think the argument
| is BS.
|
| Solar thermal is an aimed aluminum trough and a stainless
| steel pipe painted black on its focal point.
| 15457345234 wrote:
| > Solar thermal is an aimed aluminum trough and a stainless
| steel pipe painted black on its focal point.
|
| No, it's actually these fairly sophisticated phase-change
| evacuated tubes that have a heatsink at one end immersed in
| the water, from what I remember reading.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| It sounds like you're talking about an "air to water"
| heat pump. Or some other source to water heat pump.
|
| Phase changes, and pressurized tubes screams heat pump to
| me. This is different than solar thermal which is
| essentially leaving a bottle of water sitting in your car
| on a sunny day. Nothing more complex needed.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| There are two kinds of water-heating systems based on
| heat-pump related ideas.
|
| One circulates a non-water liquid between the panels and
| the hot water storage tank, and it exchanges heat
| obtained from the panel with the water in the tank. This
| has the downside of being complex (pumps, weird liquids
| etc.), but has the upside of keeping the fluid system
| associated with the panels distinct, which can reduce
| issues with freezing and can boost efficiency.
|
| The other system doesn't use thermal panels at all, but
| just uses electricity to drive an air-source heat pump
| that exchanges with the storage tank.
| thsksbd wrote:
| Evacuated tube? Like the heat pipes on you CPU? Sure, but
| completely unnecessary unless you want to get rid of the
| pump [1]. And why get rid of the pump to substitute it
| with an evacuated tube?
|
| [1] which you don't even need if you route the system
| well or use valves.
| mlyle wrote:
| It can be either. There's fancy thermosiphons, etc, but
| you can also just preheat water going into a water heater
| by pretty dumb means. You can run circulating pumps. You
| can have a separate working loop. Etc, etc, etc.
|
| The Carter panels were pretty simple boxes with pipes and
| water circulated through them, I think.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| The best would be too use water-cooled PV panels with a heat
| pump to cool down the coolant and transform the heat. Cool
| panels produce quite a bit more electricity while the heat
| can be used elsewhere. Water-cooled panels are available
| commercially (with promises of far too high efficiencies,
| salesdroids gonna salesdroid) so this is not a pipe dream,
| especially not there where a water/water heat pump is
| available anyway - just install some valves to re-route the
| coolant through the panels.
| pstuart wrote:
| I've had this notion too. The kicker is, as always, cost.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It's an easy intermittent power sink for supplemental hot
| water if you don't want to be grid tied or bother with a
| battery bank.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| I think electric solar heating makes sense for a lot of
| installations.
|
| Wires are easier than pipes, we still need electricity, make
| the existing system larger rather than split between the two.
| Heat water during the midday when output is high. I use
| almost no hot water, so the system would have a long payback
| period. But I can heat water in a 15A kettle.
|
| I love solar thermal, Trombe Walls should be integrated into
| the construction directly or added after the fact. They are
| for building heat, not water.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trombe_wall
| interestica wrote:
| I didn't know they were solar water heating until right now.
| Barbados has been a cool case study of large scale adoption of
| solar water heating:
|
| https://cdkn.org/resource/cdkn-inside-story-seizing-the-suns...
| whoisthemachine wrote:
| I was just on vacation in Greece, and solar water heaters are
| on every home and building there.
| tetris11 wrote:
| Everybody and their dog had a solar heater on their house
| in Cyprus, from 30 years ago. It was cheap deployable tech
| accessible to literally peasant farmers.
|
| I visited Sardinia recently for the first time, and saw the
| exact same type of houses built there, with the same
| climate, but not a single solar heater on their roofs. I
| wondered aloud why, but got no answer.
|
| My guess is that an energy company took an interest early
| on in Sardinia, and Cyprus was thankfully missed for a few
| decades.
| morkalork wrote:
| In Canada it's not uncommon too see some homemade looking
| solar heating setups connected to people's pools. The coiled
| black tubing on shed roofs is very distinctive.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I'm well below Canada's latitude, and it costs me $250/mo
| to heat a relatively small swimming pool (about 10,000 gal)
| ... in the summer. If I keep it warm enough to swim in
| October, it'll be at least twice that. The capital cost of
| the heater is practically zero compared to the fuel. I can
| totally understand janky DIY setups to try and defray that
| cost.
| ok_dad wrote:
| There's a bunch of YouTube videos showing how to make them.
| It's really easy, actually, and you can get like 250-500W
| of heating from what seems to be a reasonably small device.
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