Tesla Model S waffling

[ZBB]

Nearly every house in the US is on-gird...

Nearly all residential solar installations in the US are "grid-tie" systems. You basically have to be away from the grid to want a standalone system.

I know one guy on the Tesla forum -- they have a place in Alaska with solar and battery storage. He's off-grid...

[JST]

Right. Unless you are prepping for the zombie apocalypse, there's no reason to spend the money to be grid-independent.

[JST]

And here's a stat that challenges the idea that solar is a bullshit solution to make 1 percenters feel green:

In the first 3 quarters of 2014, over one third of new US electric generation came from solar.


https://gigaom.com/2014/12/10/over-a...lar-this-year/

The article doesn't break this down by commercial v residential, but that kind of stat illustrates the small actions aggregated can have big results.

[kognito]

I, (had) and many other full time RV'er have off grid systems.

Very easy to do, and about half your systems in an RV are 12V. Battery banks in the belly of the RV, a good Xantrex inverter, and I could run anything except the whole unit AC

[lemming]

Originally Posted by JST

And here's a stat that challenges the idea that solar is a bullshit solution to make 1 percenters feel green:

In the first 3 quarters of 2014, over one third of new US electric generation came from solar.


https://gigaom.com/2014/12/10/over-a...lar-this-year/

The article doesn't break this down by commercial v residential, but that kind of stat illustrates the small actions aggregated can have big results.

i'm not sure that article is as convincing because it is very careful about the adjective "new" and the comment that it's obviously behind natural gas.

and it really, like you point out, does not discriminate between businesses and households. i understand there is a household credit, but i am dubious that the bulk of this new solar energy is from households --businesses can write this shit off and likely represents the lion's share of it.

i.e. i'm not convinced that using solar to charge your Tesla is not a 1%-er endeavour. that data doesn't really speak to it with any granularity.

and i asked about on-grid/off-grid because off-grid requires battery storage which makes an abysmal efficiency even worse so it was important, for the sake of this discussion, to make that clear.

[John V]

Originally Posted by JST

And here's a stat that challenges the idea that solar is a bullshit solution to make 1 percenters feel green:

In the first 3 quarters of 2014, over one third of new US electric generation came from solar.


https://gigaom.com/2014/12/10/over-a...lar-this-year/

The article doesn't break this down by commercial v residential, but that kind of stat illustrates the small actions aggregated can have big results.

Your last sentence is key. Residential solar is likely a very small percentage of that.

[JST]

No need to speculate.

http://www.seia.org/research-resourc...-industry-data

[John V]

So, yeah.

[lemming]

thanks for finding the data, JST.

[JST]

Back to the topic of the thread (ie, the Model S). My service center has determined that I need a new drive unit. No ETA on a replacement. Car still performs fine, but it definitely makes a noise that it didn't used to at highway speeds.