15 minutes ago, VocalNeal said:

Not corn to cars but there is always cutting down trees in the US, pelletizing them, shipping to a power station in UK while collecting subsidies because it is "renewable"

Good gig if you can get it.

You do know we have fast growing pines planted specifically for that, right ?
They are not cutting down old forests for that at all.

40 minutes ago, carlyai said:

@Bandersnatch I've one of those batteries. :)

Currently I have a 10kWh on my backup system

but I am looking at getting more of the 16kWh G4 mainly because of the LED light strip showing the state of charge ;)

52 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

The reason I think the justifying batteries is such a heavy lift, is because my MEA off-peak rate looks to be about 40% less than my peak rate. To provide night (off peak) power, I have to have batteries, plus, I have to have additional panels and inverter capacity to charge the batteries, to provide power that is already much cheaper.

If you don't have batteries you are only covering your electricity usage for about 10 hours a day so the remaining 14 hours will come from the grid, so you might be only covering half your current electric bill.

On cloudy and rainy days a battery smooths out electricity production, by charging in the sunny spells and preventing grid usage when it clouds over.

50 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

growing corn to make ethanol to mix with gas/petrol to make it "renewable"

I am not a fan of Bio fuels, it's far more efficient to put solar panels on the land used for biofuels

Plants convert less than 1% of sunlight into biomass through photosynthesis. Even more energy is then lost when we turn those plants into liquid fuels.

By comparison, solar panels convert about 25%

"currently 32 million hectares are used for biofuels which is about the size of Germany. If we put solar panels on that land, we could produce roughly 32,000 terawatt-hours of electricity each year, compared to just 1,400 terawatt-hours from biofules. The world generated 31,000 TWh of electricity in 2024. So, these new solar panels would produce enough to meet the world’s current electricity demand"

https://ourworldindata.org/biofuel-land-solar-electric-vehicles

1 minute ago, Bandersnatch said:

If you don't have batteries you are only covering your electricity usage for about 10 hours a day so the remaining 14 hours will come from the grid, so you might be only covering half your current electric bill.

On cloudy and rainy days a battery smooths out electricity production, by charging in the sunny spells and preventing grid usage when it clouds over.

Exactly, but the night power costs much less than the day power.

In any event, I need to determine what my day and night usage is for a few months to figure out how much power I actually use. My "plan" is to have just enough panels to cover my daylight usage. During the day, I'll mostly be running a 60,000BTU, a 36,000 BTU as well as laundry and whatnot. I had a stub-out installed in the carport for an EV when they did the tree-phase,, but we don't have one yet. My boy might get one next year.

2 minutes ago, Bandersnatch said:

I am not a fan of Bio fuels, it's far more efficient to put solar panels on the land used for biofuels

Plants convert less than 1% of sunlight into biomass through photosynthesis. Even more energy is then lost when we turn those plants into liquid fuels.

By comparison, solar panels convert about 25%

"currently 32 million hectares are used for biofuels which is about the size of Germany. If we put solar panels on that land, we could produce roughly 32,000 terawatt-hours of electricity each year, compared to just 1,400 terawatt-hours from biofules. The world generated 31,000 TWh of electricity in 2024. So, these new solar panels would produce enough to meet the world’s current electricity demand"

https://ourworldindata.org/biofuel-land-solar-electric-vehicles

So whats the KW cost for that solar ? Solar farms require a LOT of manual labor and specialized equipment to keep them going, the panels need to be washed every 3-5 days on average, more often if air born particulates are an issue (like here)

Don't forget to add this to the cost

48 minutes ago, Bandersnatch said:

If you don't have batteries you are only covering your electricity usage for about 10 hours a day so the remaining 14 hours will come from the grid, so you might be only covering half your current electric bill.

I've got mine in grid tie mode (PowMr 6.2Kw cost 6,400bht).

Covers all my electricity costs including my EV car and MTB.

But I turn it off for 3 days before meter reading, so nobody sees it running backwards, and the PEA get to make 150-200bht.

1 hour ago, Slowhand225 said:

You do know we have fast growing pines planted specifically for that, right ?
They are not cutting down old forests for that at all.

Making biodiesel and ethanol from products and land that can be used for food is just human error and stupidity. It will force the food prices up as well. I havent seen the video. But think you can use areas you should used for food, is utterly stupid. Build infrastructure up in the highs and out in the sea as well Mining more resources for wind power is also just stupid, and takes more of nature and making our footprint even bigger, also thinking of bio diversity that also get impacted.

Making bilateral deals with a plan to make electricity more expensive to defend the investments paid by tax payers revenues made by stock holders and international dirty companies with a green fasade.

They could had solved the emission problem on a different level to truly save the environment and planet!

Follow the money you will understand

23 minutes ago, Slowhand225 said:

So whats the KW cost for that solar ?

The cost of solar has to be spread over it's useful life which is usually 25 years. Large solar park (utility-scale) solar panel installation costs typically range from approximately $0.60 to over $1.00 per watt

29 minutes ago, Slowhand225 said:

Solar farms require a LOT of manual labor and specialized equipment to keep them going, the panels need to be washed every 3-5 days on average, more often if air born particulates are an issue (like here)

Biofuels need planting and harvesting every year. Don't forget pesticides and fertilizers.

I've had solar for 8 years and only wash my panels once or twice a year, but I thought I had better check to see if large solar parks really do wash them every 3-5 days

3 minutes ago, Bandersnatch said:

The cost of solar has to be spread over it's useful life which is usually 25 years. Large solar park (utility-scale) solar panel installation costs typically range from approximately $0.60 to over $1.00 per watt

Biofuels need planting and harvesting every year. Don't forget pesticides and fertilizers.

I've had solar for 8 years and only wash my panels once or twice a year, but I thought I had better check to see if large solar parks really do wash them every 3-5 days

What is the useful like of the batteries?

22 minutes ago, Bandersnatch said:

The cost of solar has to be spread over it's useful life which is usually 25 years. Large solar park (utility-scale) solar panel installation costs typically range from approximately $0.60 to over $1.00 per watt

Biofuels need planting and harvesting every year. Don't forget pesticides and fertilizers.

I've had solar for 8 years and only wash my panels once or twice a year, but I thought I had better check to see if large solar parks really do wash them every 3-5 days

I've done work for solar farms and thats where I got that info. Not AI
I know for a fact that the ones in Louisiana that I did work for did NOT get 25 yrs out of a panel, they swapped them out on a 7 yr cycle. They also washed their panels on 3-5 day rotation, if it was cane season it was 3 days.

Tree farms don't need any of that. The trees are built to resistant to pests, molds etc and be fast growing.
Certainly your AI should have told you that

13 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

What is the useful like of the batteries?

My nRuit batteries use CATL LFP cells with a 6,000+ cycle life after which it's expected to have an 70-80% capacity remaining (similar to an EV)

with a 50% Depth of Discharge daily that's over 30 years in ideal conditions

On 2/1/2026 at 6:35 AM, Bandersnatch said:

The reason that this channel and his main channel Technology Connections have a combined 3.5M subscribers is I think because he is so good at explaining complex topics.

I posted this video for 2 distinct groups. Followers of this forum that understand the topics covered but are looking for ways to explain them to others that just don't get it yet. I was also hoping that some of these people might also watch it, but you're right an hour is probably too long.

It is far too long for the people who need to see it. They have short attention spans.

3 minutes ago, Slowhand225 said:

I know for a fact that the ones in Louisiana that I did work for did NOT get 25 yrs out of a panel, they swapped them out on a 7 yr cycle.

That's an economic decision.

My first solar panels were 350 Watt, my latest were 705W.

Solar panels last 25 years that's a fact, but swapping them every 7 years might make the company more money.

6 minutes ago, Slowhand225 said:

They also washed their panels on 3-5 day rotation

Again an economic decision and it's not a big deal now that it's all done by robots

1 hour ago, Bandersnatch said:

My nRuit batteries use CATL LFP cells with a 6,000+ cycle life after which it's expected to have an 70-80% capacity remaining (similar to an EV)

with a 50% Depth of Discharge daily that's over 30 years in ideal conditions

How have they held up for the eight years you've had them?

1 hour ago, Bandersnatch said:

My nRuit batteries use CATL LFP cells with a 6,000+ cycle life after which it's expected to have an 70-80% capacity remaining (similar to an EV)

with a 50% Depth of Discharge daily that's over 30 years in ideal conditions

So, if I go with batteries, should I size them such that I have about 2.8 times capacity of what my nightly usage is?

Or should I size them for twice what I need, and just add additional units to maintain the capacity as the originals degrade?

1 hour ago, Bandersnatch said:

That's an economic decision.

My first solar panels were 350 Watt, my latest were 705W.

Solar panels last 25 years that's a fact, but swapping them every 7 years might make the company more money.

Again an economic decision and it's not a big deal now that it's all done by robots

My 10x 340w panels, started with real op of 250w which reduced to 125w each after 3 years, except for one that produced nothing.

28 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

How have they held up for the eight years you've had them?

I don't have detailed diagnostics on their state of charge but I haven't noticed a drop in capacity.

47 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

So, if I go with batteries, should I size them such that I have about 2.8 times capacity of what my nightly usage is?

Or should I size them for twice what I need, and just add additional units to maintain the capacity as the originals degrade?

Even a 5kWh battery will substantially improve the efficiency of your solar system during the day. To cover night time usage there are a number of factors to consider.

I get asked this question quite often, so I made a video about it.

1 hour ago, BritManToo said:

My 10x 340w panels, started with real op of 250w which reduced to 125w each after 3 years, except for one that produced nothing.

OMG were they Tier 1 panels? If so name and shame.

Like with a lot of things, the eco-recycle-renewable "Going Green" thing is a scam that has created a multibillion dollar industry and thousands of jobs out of nothing, and is all on a lie with the public footing the bill. Have a watch of the darling of the left Micheal Moore's "Planet of the Humans"... slightly awkward.

59 minutes ago, Sir Dude said:

"Going Green" thing is a scam

Your only evidence to support your theory is a documentary from 2019 that was widely criticised at the time as "misleading and outdated"

"green energy documentary branded dangerous by climate scientists"

The film used footage that was over a decade old at the time it was released.

I watched it when it was released on YouTube along with a whole bunch of videos showing the inaccuracies, frankly it was a joke.

1 hour ago, Sir Dude said:

Have a watch of the darling of the left Micheal Moore's "Planet of the Humans"

In fact it was written, directed, and produced and narrated by Jeff Gibbs. Michael Moore's role was Producer

https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/why-planet-of-the-humans-is-crap

There have been comments that the video I posted is too long, which is a a fair criticism. I have made a transcript of the video which cuts out all the jokes and side stories:

Petroleum is a 19th century technology dependent on an extremely intensive resource extraction process and costs can change quite dramatically based on supply and demand.

Since nearly every step in our economy currently involves something going on a truck which burns diesel fuel, spikes in oil prices make their way into virtually everything we buy.

As we burn fuels that makes those fuels single use, one and done, we have no choice but to keep finding more oil to make more fuel, because oil deposits inevitably run dry, we often rely on extraction in other countries, which may or may not be friendly.

While oil is relatively easy to store, meaning we can build reserves of oil, we use it a lot faster than you may realize. The US 714 million barrel strategic oil reserve sounds huge, but it only holds enough to sustain slightly more than a month of current use.

The energy we capture from renewable sources like solar and wind power doesn't cost anything and while the batteries we will use to support those sources are expensive to purchase, batteries can be used many, many more times than a gallon of gasoline can. Today's battery chemistries are pushing 5,000 charge cycles before they wear out. Meaning they'll last well over a decade before they need to be recycled. And the future of batteries looks even brighter than that with different chemistries extending lifespans, lowering costs, and reducing the use of harmful or hard to find materials in the construction of battery cells.

These factors combined to tell a clear story which says renewable energy paired with long lasting and reusable energy storage is the best deal out there and we'd be foolish to pass it up. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying to you to protect their own interests or simply hasn't been paying attention to what things look like today.

In 2026, the levelized cost of solar and storage, which includes the costs of purchasing both the panels and the batteries, is now lower than any other kind of energy production we know of because the sun is free.

Today, solar panels and batteries are now cheap and solar power is just one source of renewable energy. Renewable energy is the future because it allows us to harvest energy, not extract it.

How much fuel does an average $20,000 ICE car burn over its life? To purchase all the fuel will cost more than the car cost when it was new.

What about an EV? You had to plug it into the power grid to charge it, and the power grid still burns stuff. Electric cars can be charged from any source of energy that generates electricity. It can make use of that abundant and cheap resources, which has national security benefits.

Charging an EV in the US exclusively at night on cheap rates costs about 1/3 as much to drive as it does to drive an equivalent ICE car.

Solar panels generates electricity for free but the panel itself wasn't free. It's made of raw materials which cost more than a gallon of gas. But unlike a gallon of gas, using this thing doesn't require destroying it. The useful life of gasoline is exactly once. But the useful life of a solar panel is on the order of decades. It's a machine with no moving parts which harvests energy from the sun. That is how solar energy became the least expensive form of electricity. The "high upfront cost" becomes pennies a day per panel.

A 500 Watt panel in the US is $175/ ฿5,567 (Thailand equivalent cost $68.87/ ฿2,190) so instead of spending $20,000 on fuel for your car you could buy 111 of those panels in the US (290 in Thailand) which represents about six or seven complete rooftop solar installations for an average single family US home (18 homes in Thailand). This does ignore the labor to install the panels and the racking and the wires, inverters etc but those 12 panels will produce way more electricity than my car needs and in fact could power my entire home on most days.

The essential and core fact to confront here, and this is a fact that often gets overlooked in debates, is that renewable energy capacity is not disposable. It is in fact durable, and that makes it functionally a one-time investment. You only have to buy and install these things once, and then they simply sit there generating free electricity for years to come.

Nobody likes a power cut, so some people buy a backup generator. If those people own a machine which can power everything in their home by itself, why don't they get their money's worth out of it and just use that machine all the time? Why stay connected to the power grid at all? Well, that's because that machine needs fuel to generate electricity and using a backup generator is much more expensive than pulling energy directly from the power grid.

Biofuels: to make ICE cars a bit more green pumps often show that contain up to 10% ethanol that came from corn (sugar cane in Thailand) We have been using an astonishing amount of our rich agricultural land to grow corn to feed to cars. The idea was to start making our own energy for cars so that we'd be less dependent on foreign oil. The only trouble is that doing it with corn ethanol is tremendously stupid.

Putting solar panels on land used for biofuels would produce enough electricity for all cars and trucks to go electric. 32 million hectares are used for biofules around the world about the size of Germany. If we put solar panels on that land, we could produce roughly 32,000 terawatt-hours of electricity each year, compared to just 1,400 terawatt-hours from biofules. The world generated 31,000 TWh of electricity in 2024. So, these new solar panels would produce enough to meet the world’s current electricity demand

Growing crops is a very inefficient process. Plants convert less than 1% of sunlight into biomass through photosynthesis. Even more energy is then lost when we turn those plants into liquid fuels. By comparison, solar panels convert as much as 25%.

What materials go into a solar panel? The solar cell is about as thin as a human hair. The vast majority of a panel is either aluminum or glass materials which are so cheap and easy to get that we use them for food containers. And it's also notable because these food containers, mainly glass bottles and jars and aluminum cans are something we already actively recycle. So almost all of its raw material mass can easily be recovered and turned into another panel.

When it comes to the silicon cells, you've probably heard that these things are full of toxic materials. That's misinformation. The vast majority are using monochrystallin silicon which is a material we derive from quartz you know rocks.

What about the batteries? Some of the latest batteries with a daily charge cycle should get to 15 years old before they start degrading significantly. When batteries have degraded, they're still there. When battery cells degrade, it's not as if the material inside of them is disappearing. That's kind of the whole point of renewable energy, it's called renewable because it's not disposable.

Lead acid batteries are almost entirely made from old lead acid batteries, we capture about 99% of the material in dead car batteries. We have a nearly closed loop recycling stream. It's just cheaper to mine lead from a lead battery than from the ground and this is even more so for Lithium which is far more valuable than Lead.

Lithium Iron Phosphate is the most common battery chemistry now in EVs and solar storage. They don't contain nickel, manganese, or cobalt and in addition to eliminating the need for conflict minerals, LFP battery chemistry is also much more stable, meaning the risks of battery fires have been reduced dramatically. And we're on the cusp of commercializing sodium ion batteries, which don't use lithium at all. They use sodium, the stuff in table salt, the stuff we can get simply by filling a pot with seawater and waiting a while.

Wind turbines: Something interesting you can do with these is put them in fields alongside crops and farm the wind and some corn at the same time. You can actually also do that with solar panels going crops in the shade or grazing animals underneath. How long does it take for a wind turbine to fully charge an EV? About 2 minutes