I live in a northern climate and I know multiple people who are net zero with solar+basic battery.
Proper insulation and good windows go a very long way. For instance, I set my heat to 66F during the day and 60F at night. When I wake up in the morning, the register is usually still above 60F.
66F is ridiculously cold to me, and I live in Canada where it can reach -40(F or C) in the winter. I would find that very uncomfortable and elderly people would be shivering constantly and highly susceptible to respiratory illness.
I have a modern cold climate air source heat pump which essentially needs to run 24 hours a day to maintain a stable 20C when the outdoor temperatures reach -15C. Below that, the heat pump shuts off and the furnace kicks in to provide emergency heating. My thermostat is a modern one with full time-of-day and day-of-week scheduling for heating and cooling, but it doesn't matter because the heat pump by itself is not able to swing the temperature up (by even half a degree) on its own, so this causes the furnace to kick in every time the schedule calls for a higher temperature, defeating the entire purpose of time-of-day scheduling.
I will also add that where I live (Southern Ontario) the sky is overcast 90% of the time during the winter. Solar panels, even somehow free of snow and ice, are going to produce almost nothing on those dark days. Add in the need to keep the panels free of snow and ice (presumably with heating, since nobody is going to be climbing around on their roof in the winter), and you'd likely reach energy net-negative trying to make use of them.
Modern heat pumps can heat efficiently at -25 degrees Celsius or even lower. Not sure if they are available in Canada, but in Scandinavia (similar climate) they are pretty common.
I also agree that 66F (about 19 degrees Celsius) is not comfortable during day time. It is fine for sleeping temperature. During winter homes in heating dominated climates typically have higher indoor temperatures. One advantage of lower inside temperature is that relative humidity stays slightly higher when it is very cold outside.
>66F is ridiculously cold to me...I would find that very uncomfortable and elderly people would be shivering constantly and highly susceptible to respiratory illness.
I know people who live in the Mediterranean and get by with no heating during the winter with indoor and outdoor tempuratures this low or lower, so it seems that one can be conditioned into doing so.
Perhaps it's the presence of more sunlight on average rather than the temperature that makes the difference.
You’re forgetting about humidity. Mediterranean climate has comfortable humidity year-round. Where I live, winter relative humidity is 0% because outdoor humidity is nonexistent from freezing temperatures.
My temperature tolerance has varied quite drastically over my lifetime. Born in the south, raised mostly in Iowa as one of those kids who was wearing shorts as soon as the temp was above 20 degrees. To a pathetic SoCal resident who reaches for a jacket or hoodie when it hits 65 degrees. You absolutely do adapt and rather quickly.
People acclimatize pretty well if you let them. We keep our house at 65F all winter, and set the AC for 85F in the summer and everyone is pretty happy. The payback period on a good sweater is not very long.
Setting for command is different from actual temp. Plus, humidity is rarely accounted for. A good AC that lowers humidity from 90%+ to 30% and this 30°C home becomes quite comfortable.
I actually live on the same latitude as Ontario so -40F/C is not unusual. Add in windchill, and it gets even more common, given my windy location.
Yeah, I understand I'm probably an outlier at 66F. I was using the numbers more to point out how little a house temperature will drop with good windows and insulation.
What year was your house built? Do you have a whole-house humidifier?
My house was built in the late 1980s. It has decent insulation but not amazing. It still needs a lot of heating when temperatures plunge below -15C. I do not have a whole-house humidifier. I had one with my previous furnace but it had issues with mold in the filter and clogging of the condensate pump.
In the northwest corner of Massachusetts I converted an old school into an apartment building. I installed 2" of polystyrene on the outside and about a foot of cellulose in the ceilings. We relay on heatpumps for HVAC. I also installed a 50kW solar array. We don't start paying for heating until Nov/Dec and stop paying in Apr/May. Our Electric usage goes through the roof in Jan/Feb/Mar. Our weak point is that the exterior walls are about 40% windows. I hope to install better thermal shades which will cost about $80k. We also last fall installed a solar thermal array to for hot water and heat the hallway which is radiant floor. I would like to think we could achieve net-zero but I will likely need to expand the solar array by about 200%.
Thermal curtains are more effective than good windows. Good windows are minimally helpful.
Thermal curtains are a godsend. I remember reading about your journey and I hope it works out! I think it'd be money well spent.
In my last house, I replaced single pane windows with properly installed, sealed, and insulated double-hungs and it practically cut my heat bill in half. I agree that modern window to modern window replacement probably won't get you much, though.
Net zero. But not effectively zero. They sell energy during the day when no one needs it and buy it an night when we all need it. If we all switched to solar and heat pumps there would be blackouts and an energy crisis
If no one needs it during the day, they can't sell it. That's not how markets work. Energy that is generated, needs to be consumed or else the grid breaks down. These two facts together mean, that the energy they sell is needed and used. Albeit they could generate and sell even more energy, if the energy could be stored or if the load could be shaped accordingly. The latter is a great way to lower energy costs.
Energy consumption during the night is low. So low, that night time electricity prices, which are lower than the daytime prices, are still a thing.
Heat pumps are an opportunity for load shaping. Buildings can be heated, when electricity is abundant and heated a few degree over the target temperature, if needed. The heat is stored inside the building and needs less heating during the night. That works quite well, especially here in Europe were buildings generally have good insulation and are made of brick, which can store a lot of heat.
Solar generates like 1/10 in the northern countries for half of the year. No batteries currently can solve this.
The problem with global ecological regulations is they never differentiate between countries on the equator or 30th parallel with countries around 60. They expect everyone to only run on sun and wind. It isn't possible. There has to be at least nuclear which is ridiculously expensive.
It's generally not an easy problem to solve otherwise it wouldn't be a problem anymore.
First sensible thing to do is to relax the expectations for countries like Poland that have no good way to compete with other countries energy wise because of geographical location that noone chooses.
It is extremely unfair to treat everyone the same even though every country has different energy resources.
There's a solution that costs less than fossil fuels, but it's a coordination problem and the USA is structurally unable to solve those anymore. I guess the Soviet Union wins the last laugh?
Because the sun doesn't shine every day. Where I live, the sky is overcast 90% of the time in the winter. You can't charge the batteries during the summer and run them all winter.
They've fallen victim to a catastrophically easy scare tactic, unfortunately. "The sun only shines during the day therefore solar is bad!" Dumb, but easy.
In Toronto there is only daylight for 9 hours in winter
Yes surely some days are cloudy
So some days you get 5% capacity factor, and need some other energy source as well
So it harms the economics of the venture
Look at the profitability of companies building utility scale solar farms, they cost 100 million and the company hopes to get a 10% return and pay a 3% dividend.
They still have to contend with moving parts for tracking the angle of the sun, fans on inverters, contactors, clearing snow, mowing grass, site drainage, tornadoes etc, so sometimes it is not as easy as it sounds
All for a 7%? Why shouldn’t they just buy the s&p 500 and call it a day
I had a 20kWh array and 18kWh of batteries in Texas and it was GREAT in the summer. It'd start charging by 6am and be charged by 9am, even with simultaneous usage. Then we'd live off solar for the day (even with HVAC), go back on batteries around 9pm and they'd be out around 4am. No problem.
But during an overcast winter day, the stack wouldn't get power until 8/9, not make it to 50%, start discharging by 4/5pm, and be out by 10/11pm. It would easily be 8-10 hours where we were wholly dependent on the grid.
Not a problem, just a constraint to acknowledge and plan for.
At 66F, I struggle to do job because my fingers go numb and I can't touch-type well. If others have that problem, a small heat-lamp (like for a reptile cage) can locally heat just the area above the keyboard cheaply.
More like a shakedown, not a joyride. Artemis 2&3 are similar to Apollo 8-10. Practice, cautious testing. Yeah we've been there done that, but it's been 50 years and we've got a new ship we've got to run through its paces.
Space is still hard.
Aside from just "neat" we always have more to learn. The last Apollo mission was the only one to carry an actual scientist, prof. Harrison Schmitt. Artemis stands to do a lot more actual science overall. We still don't know how the moon actually got there.
As to what if anything useful we actually get from this, the same stuff we did the first time really. Though arguably much less economic gain.
The switch was surprisingly smooth. I think there's an official migration guide in the doc. Honestly the API is closer to the classic requests library so nobody will be lost.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who gets annoyed by this.
I was once at a table with someone who was eating tomato soup by putting the spoon into their mouth, bitting it, and then pulling the spoon out. I was losing my mind listening to it.
Dip, ting, dip, ting. Dip, OUCH!.
They chipped their tooth. They chipped a tooth eating tomato soup.
Same. Microwave is mainly used for defrosting or warming up leftovers. Maybe baking a potato in a rush, it works and it's faster but it's not as good as oven-baked.
I have a relative who was late to crypto, late to drop shipping, late to carbon credits, but is now absolutely all-in on AI as his ticket out. It honestly depresses the hell out of me trying to talk to him because everything is about money and getting rich.
People like this don't care about underlying technologies or learning past the most basic surface level of understanding.
Social media forums abounded Tuesday with requests for advice stemming from a screenshot of a memo saying that Landstuhl Regional Medical Center’s services for labor and delivery were suspended until further notice.
The closure is “due to the hospital’s primary objective,” according to the memo, which was signed by Lt. Col. Elizabeth Gelner, a doctor with the OB/GYN clinic at Landstuhl.
Although the primary objective is not specified, Landstuhl serves as a critical hub and evacuation point for U.S. service members wounded in training or combat operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. [0]
Whatever it was, I noticed it was Stripes, and respected their honesty despite being a military paper. Stripes has always been anove average in its honesty.
Daily multivitamins are the quintessential Pascal Wager, in my opinion. There is no reason not to take them. At worst, you'll just urinate the excess out; at best, you'll supplement missing vitamins in your diet.
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