• 0 Posts
  • 27 Comments
Joined 2 months ago
Cake day: June 5th, 2026
  • Chaf@slrpnk.nettoGreen Energy@slrpnk.net•European-style plug-in solar could quickly cut soaring utility bills in Massachusetts
    1·
    24 days ago

    I’m really wondering what your situation is then. That sounds like a worst-case scenario. Do you have a tree in front of your panels? Are you only running electrical equipment at night? 10-15 cents a day in summer either means your electricity is damn cheap, the panels don’t generate much for whatever reason, or you are not using it when it is being generated.

    Also for 500 Watt peak a battery does not make much sense, if at all it should be a small battery to buffer peak demand (the refrigerator compressor turning on or other similar high-power short duration load, but that’s definitely not worth it unless you are trying to go off-grid, but that’s a completely different topic.). That’s obviously gonna decrease your ROI.

    But just straight up saying that you doubt whether balcony solar is making its money back is detrimental to the whole cause, especially since there are enough people out there using it that are easily getting their money’s worth.

    I feel the 500kw balcony vertical install won’t cover 20% of a household.

    That depends on your household, but again - since you were emphasizing ROI - the balcony solar not being able to cover a lot of your consumption means their ROI is better! This does not mean, that one shouldn’t install bigger systems, I’m just trying to convince you, that balcony solar does have a very reasonable ROI in most cases.

  • Chaf@slrpnk.nettoGreen Energy@slrpnk.net•European-style plug-in solar could quickly cut soaring utility bills in Massachusetts
    2·
    26 days ago

    What kind of refrigerator are you running? Around 100 Watt should be enough to run a decently sized refrigerator. Solar panels are somewhat forgiving when it comes to the proper angles, 100 Watt peak should be easily achievable with an 800 Watt setup, even if they are very badly angled. Sure, not 24/7, and maybe not all year round, but that’s not the goal.

    Also, since you focused on ROI, that’s the nice thing about small installations - basically all the energy generated is directly used by you, meaning it directly replaces energy you would have had to buy otherwise. This is the more expensive kind of energy, and you “make” more money with that as if you sold the electricity. The ROI of solar power (for everyday people) goes down the bigger the system gets, as you won’t be able to use all the peak power when it is generated.

  • Chaf@slrpnk.nettoClimate@slrpnk.net•France temporarily shuts down three nuclear reactors over heatwave
    15·
    26 days ago

    Completely agree, saying that solar is heat sensitive when talking about not being able to power ACs is pretty far out there.

    Adding to what you said, ambient temperature only has a slight impact on solar’s efficiency. Solar’s efficiency usually mainly goes down due to self-heating which is due to higher irradiance. So in some sense they are less efficient because they generate more power.

    However your example numbers are way off, solar panels generate much more peak power during summer than during winter, they aren’t close to being similar (depending on lattitude, but I guess that’s a given when talking about “summer” and “winter”).

    Image [1]

    And the other part that should not be overlooked is that there tends to be some correlation between hot weather and long sunshine, which can also be seen in the plot. So not only is peak power of solar higher during the time when heatwaves are more likely, they also generate power longer.

    1. Source ↩︎

  • Chaf@slrpnk.nettoSolarpunk BreadTube@slrpnk.net•i went vegan as a joke... it changed me
    1·
    1 month ago

    Are you now just arguing for the sake of arguing?

    Your friends are already evil. You are evil. I am evil. We all deliberately cause harm, knowingly or unknowingly. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

    If people would really live by this, then why even do anything “ethical”?

    I don’t understand what you mean by the question.

    That was a response to your “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism”. With your current response even contradicting your previous statement, i.e. “Because you care for people and want to cause them no harm, or at least less? I don’t understand what you mean by the question.” <- see. There are ethical ways to live/consume in capitalism, not everything is about greed. There is a choice. Which is what vegetarianism and veganism are explicitly about. If you really lived by “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism” then there would be no rationalization for being vegetarian or vegan.

    Also still - this whole discussion can be had without going into who I am or what I do. My comment is about the video, in which he went vegan for a while, then decided to eat meat again the first second the time is over, without taking a minute to think about what he did the last month. That section where they were eating the burger could as well have been a discussion about how their month went, and how and why they continue from there. That’s a criticism that can come from anyone, no matter whether they are vegan, vegetarian or omnivore. I never claimed anywhere that I’m vegan or not, it’s irrelevant for this discussion.

  • Chaf@slrpnk.nettoSolarpunk BreadTube@slrpnk.net•i went vegan as a joke... it changed me
    1·
    1 month ago

    There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

    If people would really live by this, then why even do anything “ethical”?

    Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate on him (I don’t really have the impression that I hated on him at all, that was criticism at best) for going vegetarian, I even said earlier that it’s a step in the right direction. If this would have been a video on him going vegetarian, I wouldn’t have bothered much. Sure, from a general outside view, vegetarian is better than omnivore, but - again - in the context of the video, he himself shows why there’s not much difference between the two.

    Also this is not about me, it doesn’t even matter whether I’m vegan or not. Don’t worry, I don’t go around judging people by what they eat, “some of my best friends are vegetarian”. But those people usually don’t put videos of their eating-habits out there. I’d just have preferred some deeper introspection.

  • Chaf@slrpnk.nettoSolarpunk BreadTube@slrpnk.net•i went vegan as a joke... it changed me
    61·
    1 month ago

    I purposefully portrayed it a bit harsher, because of their own framing.

    Sure, it’s a step in the right direction, and I’m all for that, but their own reasoning doesn’t make much sense. I don’t want to cite the whole video here, but they mention so many points for why you should go vegan, and even dispute some that would argue against it, they even say that they don’t have that “craving” for meat or milk any more. They don’t even especially like the burger they ate after the month is over, but still decided that they have to do that, on the exact second the month is over, even though they went out for dinner before, and include it in the video - what kind of attitude is that? Is this all a game to them to produce content?

    Heck, he even mentions, that one of the things that would make going vegan easier is for more people to go vegan.

    And he even mentioned that industrial livestock farming is one of the most cruel things we do to animals, he mentions that cows are one of the main reasons of the huge environmental impact of our food production, etc (I’m getting tired of having to repeat all this all the time, he even summarizes all of this very well in the video). From that point of view, vegetarians are not really much better than omnivores.

    Better for you to be happy and well-motivated to join in solidarity with other animals.

    This is exactly one of the points why vegetarians and vegans are not “friends”. Abusing and exploiting animals is not really “joining in solidarity” with them.

    \rant over