The Inflation Reduction Act Will Reshape the Economy...

[Fred Bloggs]

Summary rundown of all the various provisions in the legislation that spur an innovative, clean, and lower energy economy. The government is really taking on a ginormous amount of work to implement this behemoth. And yes, that\'s a word:
gi·nor·mous
/jīˈnôrməs/
Learn to pronounce
adjectiveINFORMAL•BRITISH
extremely large; enormous.

https://blog.aee.net/as-industrial-policy-the-inflation-reduction-act-will-reshape-the-economy

 

[a a]

On Saturday, 20 August 2022 at 19:33:06 UTC+2, Fred Bloggs wrote:

Summary rundown of all the various provisions in the legislation that spur an innovative, clean, and lower energy economy. The government is really taking on a ginormous amount of work to implement this behemoth. And yes, that\'s a word:
gi·nor·mous
/jīˈnôrməs/
Learn to pronounce
adjectiveINFORMAL•BRITISH
extremely large; enormous.

https://blog.aee.net/as-industrial-policy-the-inflation-reduction-act-will-reshape-the-economy

Acts can do nothing

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 1:34:54 PM UTC-4, a a wrote:

On Saturday, 20 August 2022 at 19:33:06 UTC+2, Fred Bloggs wrote:
Summary rundown of all the various provisions in the legislation that spur an innovative, clean, and lower energy economy. The government is really taking on a ginormous amount of work to implement this behemoth. And yes, that\'s a word:
gi·nor·mous
/jīˈnôrməs/
Learn to pronounce
adjectiveINFORMAL•BRITISH
extremely large; enormous.

https://blog.aee.net/as-industrial-policy-the-inflation-reduction-act-will-reshape-the-economy
Acts can do nothing

Right- every single attempt by mankind to do anything, however modest, amounts to nothing.

 

[server]

On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 10:33:02 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
<bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:

Summary rundown of all the various provisions in the legislation that spur an innovative, clean, and lower energy economy. The government is really taking on a ginormous amount of work to implement this behemoth. And yes, that\'s a word:
gi·nor·mous
/j??nôrm?s/
Learn to pronounce
adjectiveINFORMAL•BRITISH
extremely large; enormous.

https://blog.aee.net/as-industrial-policy-the-inflation-reduction-act-will-reshape-the-economy

\"Transformational\" is a synonym for destructive.

We can undo all that after the next couple election cycles. The
federal government always does more, when it should do less.

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 2:19:57 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 10:33:02 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:

Summary rundown of all the various provisions in the legislation that spur an innovative, clean, and lower energy economy. The government is really taking on a ginormous amount of work to implement this behemoth. And yes, that\'s a word:
gi·nor·mous
/j??nôrm?s/
Learn to pronounce
adjectiveINFORMAL•BRITISH
extremely large; enormous.

https://blog.aee.net/as-industrial-policy-the-inflation-reduction-act-will-reshape-the-economy
\"Transformational\" is a synonym for destructive.

We can undo all that after the next couple election cycles. The
federal government always does more, when it should do less.

The consumer tax credits are pretty good- now you get one for even a used EV? Can\'t complain about that. Even bigger are all the residential efficiency improvement credits- conversion to total heat pump to eliminate gas and oil burning for heat- beefing up home insulation, windows and doors- all those things make a HUGE difference when 100 million installations are involved- and what works for heating obviously also works for cooling which will really be stressed in the near future. They should be giving a credit for buying Energy Star appliances too. The hard part will be all the brand new manufacturing base they\'re hoping for- that doesn\'t happen overnight. One semiconductor industry expert said it will be 15 years before the U.S. will have the semiconductor manufacturing capacity they\'re hoping for- mainly because U.S. has to start from scratch developing a workforce.

 

[server]

On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 12:47:29 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
<bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 2:19:57 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 10:33:02 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:

Summary rundown of all the various provisions in the legislation that spur an innovative, clean, and lower energy economy. The government is really taking on a ginormous amount of work to implement this behemoth. And yes, that\'s a word:
gi·nor·mous
/j??nôrm?s/
Learn to pronounce
adjectiveINFORMAL•BRITISH
extremely large; enormous.

https://blog.aee.net/as-industrial-policy-the-inflation-reduction-act-will-reshape-the-economy
\"Transformational\" is a synonym for destructive.

We can undo all that after the next couple election cycles. The
federal government always does more, when it should do less.

The consumer tax credits are pretty good- now you get one for even a used EV? Can\'t complain about that. Even bigger are all the residential efficiency improvement credits- conversion to total heat pump to eliminate gas and oil burning for heat- beefing up home insulation, windows and doors- all those things make a HUGE difference when 100 million installations are involved- and what works for heating obviously also works for cooling which will really be stressed in the near future. They should be giving a credit for buying Energy Star appliances too. The hard part will be all the brand new manufacturing base they\'re hoping for- that doesn\'t happen overnight. One semiconductor industry expert said it will be 15 years before the U.S. will have the semiconductor manufacturing capacity they\'re hoping for- mainly because U.S. has to start from scratch developing a workforce.

We had a workforce until government piled on so much overhead that it
was necessary to go offshore. Again, government \"solves\" the problems
caused by too much spending by spending more.

The US tax code, guidance, and regulations are over 80,000 pages. The
oxymoron Inflation Reduction Act no doubt added more. Our government
ensures full employment for lawyers and accountants and government
employees.

Build fabs in Taiwan and Ireland.

 

[Ed Lee]

On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 12:47:33 PM UTC-7, Fred Bloggs wrote:

> The consumer tax credits are pretty good- now you get one for even a used EV?

Don\'t know if the domestic content will apply to used EV. If so, it\'s truly inflation (budget deficit) reduction, since almost none would qualify. Definitely will reduce inflation right before Biden is up for re-election.

The idea may be good, but impractical for next few years.

 

[Flyguy]

On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 12:47:33 PM UTC-7, Fred Bloggs wrote:

On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 2:19:57 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 10:33:02 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:

Summary rundown of all the various provisions in the legislation that spur an innovative, clean, and lower energy economy. The government is really taking on a ginormous amount of work to implement this behemoth. And yes, that\'s a word:
gi·nor·mous
/j??nôrm?s/
Learn to pronounce
adjectiveINFORMAL•BRITISH
extremely large; enormous.

https://blog.aee.net/as-industrial-policy-the-inflation-reduction-act-will-reshape-the-economy
\"Transformational\" is a synonym for destructive.

We can undo all that after the next couple election cycles. The
federal government always does more, when it should do less.
The consumer tax credits are pretty good- now you get one for even a used EV? Can\'t complain about that. Even bigger are all the residential efficiency improvement credits- conversion to total heat pump to eliminate gas and oil burning for heat- beefing up home insulation, windows and doors- all those things make a HUGE difference when 100 million installations are involved- and what works for heating obviously also works for cooling which will really be stressed in the near future. They should be giving a credit for buying Energy Star appliances too. The hard part will be all the brand new manufacturing base they\'re hoping for- that doesn\'t happen overnight. One semiconductor industry expert said it will be 15 years before the U.S. will have the semiconductor manufacturing capacity they\'re hoping for- mainly because U.S. has to start from scratch developing a workforce.

Not all EVs, Fred - look it up. And WHO pays for those \"free\" credits, anyway? It turns out to be middle-income taxpayers who can\'t afford EVs, that\'s who.

If beefing up insulation makes economic sense people will do it on their own w/o any credits. This also goes for home solar power systems. I analyzed the payback period for every state and found that it varied from 6 (Hawaii) to 23 (Wyoming) years depending upon:
1. The amount of solar energy received per year.
2. The cost of installing the system.
3. The cost of electricity in that state.
Consequently, a lot of people are installing solar systems in Hawaii because of the short payback period. Incentives now are down to a 22% federal tax credit, which doesn\'t change the payback period a large amount. What was surprising was Alaska, where the payback is just 9 years because of the high cost of electric power.

Another thing about tax credits: only people that actually pay taxes can use them, so it doesn\'t help low-income people. So, poor people end up subsidizing rich people, which is definitely happening with EVs. Although poor people don\'t pay taxes, these subsidies (which require more borrowing) drive up inflation which hurts the poor disproportionally.

 

[server]

On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 14:03:41 -0700 (PDT), Ed Lee
<edward.ming.lee@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 12:47:33 PM UTC-7, Fred Bloggs wrote:

The consumer tax credits are pretty good- now you get one for even a used EV?

Don\'t know if the domestic content will apply to used EV. If so, it\'s truly inflation (budget deficit) reduction, since almost none would qualify. Definitely will reduce inflation right before Biden is up for re-election.

The idea may be good, but impractical for next few years.

Imagine a circle of friends who keep selling one old Tesla in a loop.
Every sale gets kilobucks of used-EV tax credit.

 

[Ed Lee]

On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 6:00:34 PM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 14:03:41 -0700 (PDT), Ed Lee
edward....@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 12:47:33 PM UTC-7, Fred Bloggs wrote:

The consumer tax credits are pretty good- now you get one for even a used EV?

Don\'t know if the domestic content will apply to used EV. If so, it\'s truly inflation (budget deficit) reduction, since almost none would qualify. Definitely will reduce inflation right before Biden is up for re-election.

The idea may be good, but impractical for next few years.
Imagine a circle of friends who keep selling one old Tesla in a loop.
Every sale gets kilobucks of used-EV tax credit.

No, even Tesla won\'t qualify. The battery must be made and material mined in qualified area. It\'s complicated.

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Sunday, August 21, 2022 at 4:19:57 AM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 10:33:02 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:

Summary rundown of all the various provisions in the legislation that spur an innovative, clean, and lower energy economy. The government is really taking on a ginormous amount of work to implement this behemoth. And yes, that\'s a word:
gi·nor·mous
/j??nôrm?s/
Learn to pronounce
adjectiveINFORMAL•BRITISH
extremely large; enormous.

https://blog.aee.net/as-industrial-policy-the-inflation-reduction-act-will-reshape-the-economy

\"Transformational\" is a synonym for destructive.

Destruction is a particular form of transformation. It isn\'t the only one. Kids growing up are transformed into adults. It didn\'t work as well as it should have done for John Larkin, but he wasn\'t destroyed in the process.

> We can undo all that after the next couple election cycles. The federal government always does more, when it should do less.

Both Flyguy and John Larkin are convinced of this. The US federal government is more readily influenced by short-sighted moneyed interests than most national governments, but even it can get some stuff right. The inflation reduction act could well be one of them, even if it was passed by the Democrats.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Sunday, August 21, 2022 at 8:00:31 AM UTC+10, Flyguy wrote:

On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 12:47:33 PM UTC-7, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 2:19:57 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 10:33:02 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:

Summary rundown of all the various provisions in the legislation that spur an innovative, clean, and lower energy economy. The government is really taking on a ginormous amount of work to implement this behemoth. And yes, that\'s a word:

https://blog.aee.net/as-industrial-policy-the-inflation-reduction-act-will-reshape-the-economy

\"Transformational\" is a synonym for destructive.

Destruction is one form of transformation. There are others, so it\'s not a synonym.

We can undo all that after the next couple election cycles. The
federal government always does more, when it should do less.

The consumer tax credits are pretty good- now you get one for even a used EV? Can\'t complain about that. Even bigger are all the residential efficiency improvement credits- conversion to total heat pump to eliminate gas and oil burning for heat- beefing up home insulation, windows and doors- all those things make a HUGE difference when 100 million installations are involved- and what works for heating obviously also works for cooling which will really be stressed in the near future. They should be giving a credit for buying Energy Star appliances too. The hard part will be all the brand new manufacturing base they\'re hoping for- that doesn\'t happen overnight. One semiconductor industry expert said it will be 15 years before the U.S. will have the semiconductor manufacturing capacity they\'re hoping for- mainly because U.S. has to start from scratch developing a workforce.

Not all EVs, Fred - look it up. And WHO pays for those \"free\" credits, anyway? It turns out to be middle-income taxpayers who can\'t afford EVs, that\'s who.

I wonder why Gnatguy thins that middle-income taxpayers couldn\'t afford EV\'s. Since they are cheaper to run, you\'d think that they couldn\'t afford not to buy them.

> If beefing up insulation makes economic sense people will do it on their own w/o any credits.

It\'s a long term investment - spend the money now and reap the benefit later, like buying an electric car. Sadly, you have to find the money up-front to make the investment, and that takes an effort.

This also goes for home solar power systems. I analyzed the payback period for every state and found that it varied from 6 (Hawaii) to 23 (Wyoming) years depending upon:
1. The amount of solar energy received per year.
2. The cost of installing the system.
3. The cost of electricity in that state.

Gnatguy presumably did it back when solar cells costs twice what they do now, and still thinks that his antiquated calculations are still valid. We are about due for another tenfold scaling up in the manufacturing volume and the accompanying halving of the unit price.

Consequently, a lot of people are installing solar systems in Hawaii because of the short payback period. Incentives now are down to a 22% federal tax credit, which doesn\'t change the payback period a large amount. What was surprising was Alaska, where the payback is just 9 years because of the high cost of electric power.

Another thing about tax credits: only people that actually pay taxes can use them, so it doesn\'t help low-income people. So, poor people end up subsidizing rich people, which is definitely happening with EVs. Although poor people don\'t pay taxes, these subsidies (which require more borrowing) drive up inflation which hurts the poor disproportionately.

The tax credits are going to go away. Putting solar cells on your roof and a Tesla Power Wall into your house is much too good an investment for any government to bother subsidising it. The utility companies don\'t like buying domestic solar output, so it makes a lot more sense to put your excess output into a Power Wall and use it up yourself overnight. Eventually the utility companieswill buy access to domestic Power Walls, and use them to even out the load on the grid, but that\'s going to take a while.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[rbowman]

On 08/20/2022 12:19 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 10:33:02 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:

Summary rundown of all the various provisions in the legislation that spur an innovative, clean, and lower energy economy. The government is really taking on a ginormous amount of work to implement this behemoth. And yes, that\'s a word:
gi·nor·mous
/j??nôrm?s/
Learn to pronounce
adjectiveINFORMAL•BRITISH
extremely large; enormous.

https://blog.aee.net/as-industrial-policy-the-inflation-reduction-act-will-reshape-the-economy

\"Transformational\" is a synonym for destructive.

We can undo all that after the next couple election cycles. The
federal government always does more, when it should do less.

TINVOWOOT

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 6:00:31 PM UTC-4, Flyguy wrote:

On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 12:47:33 PM UTC-7, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 2:19:57 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 10:33:02 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:

Summary rundown of all the various provisions in the legislation that spur an innovative, clean, and lower energy economy. The government is really taking on a ginormous amount of work to implement this behemoth. And yes, that\'s a word:
gi·nor·mous
/j??nôrm?s/
Learn to pronounce
adjectiveINFORMAL•BRITISH
extremely large; enormous.

https://blog.aee.net/as-industrial-policy-the-inflation-reduction-act-will-reshape-the-economy
\"Transformational\" is a synonym for destructive.

We can undo all that after the next couple election cycles. The
federal government always does more, when it should do less.
The consumer tax credits are pretty good- now you get one for even a used EV? Can\'t complain about that. Even bigger are all the residential efficiency improvement credits- conversion to total heat pump to eliminate gas and oil burning for heat- beefing up home insulation, windows and doors- all those things make a HUGE difference when 100 million installations are involved- and what works for heating obviously also works for cooling which will really be stressed in the near future. They should be giving a credit for buying Energy Star appliances too. The hard part will be all the brand new manufacturing base they\'re hoping for- that doesn\'t happen overnight. One semiconductor industry expert said it will be 15 years before the U.S. will have the semiconductor manufacturing capacity they\'re hoping for- mainly because U.S. has to start from scratch developing a workforce.
Not all EVs, Fred - look it up. And WHO pays for those \"free\" credits, anyway? It turns out to be middle-income taxpayers who can\'t afford EVs, that\'s who.

Well yeah- it\'s an American economic stimulus package so they want to force a demand on American manufacturing. The main themes are -demand- supply, financial innovation. Can you think of a better way to do that? Then like most gigantic spending packages, they\'re hoping the increased economic activity will increase the tax revenue to cover the cost of all these credits eventually. As for the average Joe Bloe who won\'t ever be able to afford an EV, there are more general societal considerations they do pay for. Right now the government is bailing out $50B in extreme weather destruction each year- that they admit to. And who pays for that? If it\'s the feds, that means your tax dollars.

If beefing up insulation makes economic sense people will do it on their own w/o any credits. This also goes for home solar power systems. I analyzed the payback period for every state and found that it varied from 6 (Hawaii) to 23 (Wyoming) years depending upon:
1. The amount of solar energy received per year.
2. The cost of installing the system.
3. The cost of electricity in that state.
Consequently, a lot of people are installing solar systems in Hawaii because of the short payback period. Incentives now are down to a 22% federal tax credit, which doesn\'t change the payback period a large amount. What was surprising was Alaska, where the payback is just 9 years because of the high cost of electric power.

I don\'t have high hopes for residential solar, it looks like a ripoff to me.. At today\'s prices you need to install $3,000 rooftop solar to power a coffeemaker- that\'s what I call ridiculous. I\'m not going to look up the link, but DoE did a detailed satellite based survey of every rooftop in America a few years back, and they determined less than 10% of residential housing is suitable for solar. There were a bunch of reasons for that like not enough roof area, wrong orientation to the sun, external shading from things like other structures and trees, or less than ideal weather conditions, maybe some more. Then there\'s the high density problems in urban areas- like no way does an apartment or townhouse building have the roof to power all the people living inside. Another drawback of solar panels, you pay for all that capacity whether you\'re using it or not, whereas for the grid feed, you only pay for what you use. Most power companies use the \"cost avoidance\" method to determine how much if anything they will pay for your excess solar generation, and it\'s usually less than half the billing rate, much less. Those two aspect immediately disqualify solar from consideration- in my mind anyway, such as it is...

Another thing about tax credits: only people that actually pay taxes can use them, so it doesn\'t help low-income people. So, poor people end up subsidizing rich people, which is definitely happening with EVs. Although poor people don\'t pay taxes, these subsidies (which require more borrowing) drive up inflation which hurts the poor disproportionally.

Most of these credits are what\'s called \"direct pay\" which means you receive payment from the government regardless of your tax liability. If you\'re real poor with zero taxable income, you still file, add the credit to the applicable box, and if the computed \"taxes owed\" box comes out to minus(-) $10,000, the government cuts you a check for $10,000. A credit is much more than a deduction, and a direct pay credit is the absolute tops.

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 9:00:34 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 14:03:41 -0700 (PDT), Ed Lee
edward....@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 12:47:33 PM UTC-7, Fred Bloggs wrote:

The consumer tax credits are pretty good- now you get one for even a used EV?

Don\'t know if the domestic content will apply to used EV. If so, it\'s truly inflation (budget deficit) reduction, since almost none would qualify. Definitely will reduce inflation right before Biden is up for re-election.

The idea may be good, but impractical for next few years.
Imagine a circle of friends who keep selling one old Tesla in a loop.
Every sale gets kilobucks of used-EV tax credit.

They\'re saying Musk really came through for Ukraine by giving them free access to his Starlink network. All these assassination type drone strikes against the Russians are made possible by cell phone tower triangulations the Ukrainians are doing. The Ukrainians are immune to that with Starlink.

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Monday, August 22, 2022 at 12:25:41 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:

On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 6:00:31 PM UTC-4, Flyguy wrote:
On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 12:47:33 PM UTC-7, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 2:19:57 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 10:33:02 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:

<snip>

> I don\'t have high hopes for residential solar, it looks like a ripoff to me. At today\'s prices you need to install $3,000 rooftop solar to power a coffeemaker- that\'s what I call ridiculous. I\'m not going to look up the link, but DoE did a detailed satellite based survey of every rooftop in America a few years back, and they determined less than 10% of residential housing is suitable for solar.

\"A few years back\" was before the Chinese started making cheap high yield solar cells in high volume. The economics are now a bit more attractive than they used to be.

> There were a bunch of reasons for that like not enough roof area, wrong orientation to the sun, external shading from things like other structures and trees, or less than ideal weather conditions, maybe some more. Then there\'s the high density problems in urban areas- like no way does an apartment or townhouse building have the roof to power all the people living inside. Another drawback of solar panels, you pay for all that capacity whether you\'re using it or not, whereas for the grid feed, you only pay for what you use.

But the utility company is there in exactly the same way, even when you aren\'t using it, and it\'s the consumers who end up paying - via their utility bills - the interest on the capital invested .

>Most power companies use the \"cost avoidance\" method to determine how much if anything they will pay for your excess solar generation, and it\'s usually less than half the billing rate, much less. Those two aspect immediately disqualify solar from consideration- in my mind anyway, such as it is...

If you can afford rooftop solar , you probably ought to pay out a bit more for a Tesla Power Wall or the like and store you excess output overnight rather than selling it to the power company. It\'s becoming a popular option in Australia where the utility companies are getting to be very reluctant to buy any power from roof-top solar. Their grid wasn\'t designed to cope with the amount of power roof-top solar is delivering now that it has become popular

<snip - Fred is being sensible here and I don\'t have anything to add>

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Sunday, August 21, 2022 at 10:52:08 AM UTC-4, bill....@ieee.org wrote:

On Monday, August 22, 2022 at 12:25:41 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 6:00:31 PM UTC-4, Flyguy wrote:
On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 12:47:33 PM UTC-7, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 2:19:57 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 10:33:02 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
snip
I don\'t have high hopes for residential solar, it looks like a ripoff to me. At today\'s prices you need to install $3,000 rooftop solar to power a coffeemaker- that\'s what I call ridiculous. I\'m not going to look up the link, but DoE did a detailed satellite based survey of every rooftop in America a few years back, and they determined less than 10% of residential housing is suitable for solar.
\"A few years back\" was before the Chinese started making cheap high yield solar cells in high volume. The economics are now a bit more attractive than they used to be.

You can view it that way, but a more reasonable descriptor is \"slightly less unattractive.\"

There were a bunch of reasons for that like not enough roof area, wrong orientation to the sun, external shading from things like other structures and trees, or less than ideal weather conditions, maybe some more. Then there\'s the high density problems in urban areas- like no way does an apartment or townhouse building have the roof to power all the people living inside. Another drawback of solar panels, you pay for all that capacity whether you\'re using it or not, whereas for the grid feed, you only pay for what you use.
But the utility company is there in exactly the same way, even when you aren\'t using it, and it\'s the consumers who end up paying - via their utility bills - the interest on the capital invested .

The statistic I read was that the utility\'s cost per unit installed solar runs less than half the individual residential. The same goes for all their sources of power- the individual can\'t come close to their efficiency.

Google used to have a calculator that based on their satellite imagery analysis, local weather data, geographic location effects on insolation, local cost of power and reimbursement for excess generation, local cost of solar installations and payment plans, maybe a bunch of other stuff, would compute the 20 year net cost or savings of installed solar. Solar lost all the time at my lat / long- something like $1,000 annual. I suspect that if more people paid more attention to much lower cost and longer lasting methods such as adequate insulation, they would see the same results. All solar is good for is the original intent of the technology which is getting power when you live in the middle of nowhere without a grid.

Most power companies use the \"cost avoidance\" method to determine how much if anything they will pay for your excess solar generation, and it\'s usually less than half the billing rate, much less. Those two aspect immediately disqualify solar from consideration- in my mind anyway, such as it is...
If you can afford rooftop solar , you probably ought to pay out a bit more for a Tesla Power Wall or the like and store you excess output overnight rather than selling it to the power company. It\'s becoming a popular option in Australia where the utility companies are getting to be very reluctant to buy any power from roof-top solar. Their grid wasn\'t designed to cope with the amount of power roof-top solar is delivering now that it has become popular

You must have a lot of nuclear. The power company definitely does not like making their loading unpredictable with that. They have some funny way of spec\'ing the powerwall capacity but I don\'t see it powering a 4kW central climate control through the night, and that\'s a small load. It\'s another typically very expensive Musk product.

snip - Fred is being sensible here and I don\'t have anything to add

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Monday, August 22, 2022 at 1:24:51 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:

On Sunday, August 21, 2022 at 10:52:08 AM UTC-4, bill....@ieee.org wrote:
On Monday, August 22, 2022 at 12:25:41 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 6:00:31 PM UTC-4, Flyguy wrote:
On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 12:47:33 PM UTC-7, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 2:19:57 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 10:33:02 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
snip
I don\'t have high hopes for residential solar, it looks like a ripoff to me. At today\'s prices you need to install $3,000 rooftop solar to power a coffeemaker- that\'s what I call ridiculous. I\'m not going to look up the link, but DoE did a detailed satellite based survey of every rooftop in America a few years back, and they determined less than 10% of residential housing is suitable for solar.
\"A few years back\" was before the Chinese started making cheap high yield solar cells in high volume. The economics are now a bit more attractive than they used to be.

You can view it that way, but a more reasonable descriptor is \"slightly less unattractive.\"

It seems to be pretty attractive in Australia.

There were a bunch of reasons for that like not enough roof area, wrong orientation to the sun, external shading from things like other structures and trees, or less than ideal weather conditions, maybe some more. Then there\'s the high density problems in urban areas- like no way does an apartment or townhouse building have the roof to power all the people living inside. Another drawback of solar panels, you pay for all that capacity whether you\'re using it or not, whereas for the grid feed, you only pay for what you use.

But the utility company is there in exactly the same way, even when you aren\'t using it, and it\'s the consumers who end up paying - via their utility bills - the interest on the capital invested .

The statistic I read was that the utility\'s cost per unit installed solar runs less than half the individual residential. The same goes for all their sources of power- the individual can\'t come close to their efficiency.

Half the cost of the electricity I buy pays for the cost of the distribution net work. If the solar cells are on your roof, and you use them to charge your own Tesla Power Wall or something like it, you don\'t have to pay the costs associated with distributing that chunk of power. The utility company will probably slug you harder to cover the cost of distributing the residual power you buy from time to time, but if you don\'t have to distribute your own power you save a lot because you don\'t have to pay for that

> > Google used to have a calculator that based on their satellite imagery analysis, local weather data, geographic location effects on insolation, local cost of power and reimbursement for excess generation, local cost of solar installations and payment plans, maybe a bunch of other stuff, would compute the 20 year net cost or savings of installed solar. Solar lost all the time at my lat / long- something like $1,000 annual.

Then solar cells got cheaper and marginally more productive.

> I suspect that if more people paid more attention to much lower cost and longer lasting methods such as adequate insulation, they would see the same results. All solar is good for is the original intent of the technology which is getting power when you live in the middle of nowhere without a grid.

But the grid isn\'t free.

Most power companies use the \"cost avoidance\" method to determine how much if anything they will pay for your excess solar generation, and it\'s usually less than half the billing rate, much less. Those two aspect immediately disqualify solar from consideration- in my mind anyway, such as it is....

If you can afford rooftop solar , you probably ought to pay out a bit more for a Tesla Power Wall or the like and store you excess output overnight rather than selling it to the power company. It\'s becoming a popular option in Australia where the utility companies are getting to be very reluctant to buy any power from roof-top solar. Their grid wasn\'t designed to cope with the amount of power roof-top solar is delivering now that it has become popular.

You must have a lot of nuclear.

Australia doesn\'t have any nuclear power generation at all. We\'ve got just one high neutron flux nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights. I even interviewed for a job there to work on the electronics for their new neutron diffraction set-up, but didn\'t get it. Nuclear isn\'t much good for intermittent loads. Grid storage is a lot better, and fast start gas turbines do work, but they aren\'t cheap.

> The power company definitely does not like making their loading unpredictable with that. They have some funny way of spec\'ing the powerwall capacity but I don\'t see it powering a 4kW central climate control through the night, and that\'s a small load. It\'s another typically very expensive Musk product.

It\'s still pays off better to power the central heating for half the night from the battery than it is to sell the same number of kilowatt hours back to the grid. The power companies may not like it, but they have to live with it.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[bitrex]

On 8/20/2022 4:24 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 12:47:29 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 2:19:57 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 10:33:02 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:

Summary rundown of all the various provisions in the legislation that spur an innovative, clean, and lower energy economy. The government is really taking on a ginormous amount of work to implement this behemoth. And yes, that\'s a word:
gi·nor·mous
/j??nôrm?s/
Learn to pronounce
adjectiveINFORMAL•BRITISH
extremely large; enormous.

https://blog.aee.net/as-industrial-policy-the-inflation-reduction-act-will-reshape-the-economy
\"Transformational\" is a synonym for destructive.

We can undo all that after the next couple election cycles. The
federal government always does more, when it should do less.

The consumer tax credits are pretty good- now you get one for even a used EV? Can\'t complain about that. Even bigger are all the residential efficiency improvement credits- conversion to total heat pump to eliminate gas and oil burning for heat- beefing up home insulation, windows and doors- all those things make a HUGE difference when 100 million installations are involved- and what works for heating obviously also works for cooling which will really be stressed in the near future. They should be giving a credit for buying Energy Star appliances too. The hard part will be all the brand new manufacturing base they\'re hoping for- that doesn\'t happen overnight. One semiconductor industry expert said it will be 15 years before the U.S. will have the semiconductor manufacturing capacity they\'re hoping for- mainly because U.S. has to start from scratch developing a workforce.

We had a workforce until government piled on so much overhead that it
was necessary to go offshore. Again, government \"solves\" the problems
caused by too much spending by spending more.

Bill \"Ship The Jobs To China\" Clinton had a big hand in that, welcoming
China into the WTO and making it a no-brainer for companies to do so.
Wasn\'t the wealth supposed to trickle down, anyway? Didn\'t have to be.

It didn\'t have to be that way. Leftists knew better a long time ago but
were widely ignored by Democrats and Republicans alike.

The US tax code, guidance, and regulations are over 80,000 pages. The
oxymoron Inflation Reduction Act no doubt added more. Our government
ensures full employment for lawyers and accountants and government
employees.

It is the left-libertarian position that there\'s not much point in
taxing the rich more when the govt. blows such a large percentage of it
it on weapons and military budgets like a drunken sailor, anyway.

Imperialist adventures of 20 year duration throwing money at all the
wrong things in Afghanistan, and God-knows how long throwing money at
Ukraine trying to \"bleed Russia\", has consequences, and in particular
inflationary consequences that come home to roost eventually, and people
can see it at the pump and at the grocery store and so on.

It\'s not simply a consequence of \"Marxist\" Joe Biden bowing to the
eco-weenies and turning off the pump as if any corpro-Democrat has ever
paid much other than lip service their way.

Wars are massively resource-intensive, inflationary, and wealth-destructive.

Build fabs in Taiwan and Ireland.

Nancy P seems determined to keep the China-war drums beating and the
fires stoked over there making Taiwan a risky proposition.

Keeping the military industrial complex fed (just another 100 billion
please! Then we\'ll be safe. All we need is another 100 billion...) is
expensive and maintain long lists of enemies to spar with is expensive.
As I say it could\'ve been different, there was nothing in the rules of
even market economics that said it wasn\'t possible to build a more
amicable relationship with China, while not simultaneously giving away
the farm in exchange for a lousy one, what we got was a bad value all
around.

 

[bitrex]

On 8/20/2022 6:00 PM, Flyguy wrote:

On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 12:47:33 PM UTC-7, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 2:19:57 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 10:33:02 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:

Summary rundown of all the various provisions in the legislation that spur an innovative, clean, and lower energy economy. The government is really taking on a ginormous amount of work to implement this behemoth. And yes, that\'s a word:
gi·nor·mous
/j??nôrm?s/
Learn to pronounce
adjectiveINFORMAL•BRITISH
extremely large; enormous.

https://blog.aee.net/as-industrial-policy-the-inflation-reduction-act-will-reshape-the-economy
\"Transformational\" is a synonym for destructive.

We can undo all that after the next couple election cycles. The
federal government always does more, when it should do less.
The consumer tax credits are pretty good- now you get one for even a used EV? Can\'t complain about that. Even bigger are all the residential efficiency improvement credits- conversion to total heat pump to eliminate gas and oil burning for heat- beefing up home insulation, windows and doors- all those things make a HUGE difference when 100 million installations are involved- and what works for heating obviously also works for cooling which will really be stressed in the near future. They should be giving a credit for buying Energy Star appliances too. The hard part will be all the brand new manufacturing base they\'re hoping for- that doesn\'t happen overnight. One semiconductor industry expert said it will be 15 years before the U.S. will have the semiconductor manufacturing capacity they\'re hoping for- mainly because U.S. has to start from scratch developing a workforce.

Not all EVs, Fred - look it up. And WHO pays for those \"free\" credits, anyway? It turns out to be middle-income taxpayers who can\'t afford EVs, that\'s who.

If beefing up insulation makes economic sense people will do it on their own w/o any credits. This also goes for home solar power systems. I analyzed the payback period for every state and found that it varied from 6 (Hawaii) to 23 (Wyoming) years depending upon:
1. The amount of solar energy received per year.
2. The cost of installing the system.
3. The cost of electricity in that state.
Consequently, a lot of people are installing solar systems in Hawaii because of the short payback period. Incentives now are down to a 22% federal tax credit, which doesn\'t change the payback period a large amount. What was surprising was Alaska, where the payback is just 9 years because of the high cost of electric power.

Another thing about tax credits: only people that actually pay taxes can use them, so it doesn\'t help low-income people. So, poor people end up subsidizing rich people, which is definitely happening with EVs. Although poor people don\'t pay taxes, these subsidies (which require more borrowing) drive up inflation which hurts the poor disproportionally.

The first silly bit is that \"poor people don\'t pay taxes\" which sounds
like some Fox News nonsense.

The second silly bit is that low-income people can\'t take advantage of
the tax credit, they can if they lease a vehicle, the leasing company
claims the credit and it\'s then knocked off the capitalized cost of the
car when figuring the lease payments and residual.

But many low-income people also lease cars these days, used cars have
been holding their value really well and even some beaters with 150k on
the clock are going for pushing 10k.

Buying a beater for pushing 10k and then looking at an expensive repair
not long after is an unpleasant gamble and many low-income people gamble
their jobs when they make it, reliable transportation is key to holding
down a job at the low end of the pay scale.

What the state of MA has been doing is provide a direct cash rebate
check for EV lease or buy, which offsets some of the vehicle absurd
excise tax that we pay in this state, which is basically an additional
sales tax due to the way they calculate it off MSRP not actual assessed
value.

Is your house property tax calculated based off what you paid for it
when you bought it forever? ??? Vehicle excise taxes are dumb