I apologize for the bad audio in the office scenes. It came out terrible for some reason and I tried my best to fix it in post. Believe me, it sounded much worse in the original take.
You did good, the only thing it sounds like it's missing is the lows (bass, which you could add a filter to artificially add back in). It reminds me of those older microphones used for radio that only caught the mids.
@@headwerkn I bet they are both geeks too lol since they live with a geek dad, they seem to be pretty connected which is nice for David since it seems like it's his hobby
An electric oven can use about 10 times the electricity of a computer. I suspect David switches over to a more power-conservative PC or laptop during outages.
Yup. Also it's a nice to see this kinds of stuff from a different perspective. Other channels that specializes on these kinds of stuff kinda gets boring.
the case for his friend i find odd on grid tide like ours is Generac we have 1 small battery and few that lest what i see pulls almost 6Kw on a good day but usually it's closer to 3kw but it will automatically go from grid to island mode when the grid fails which disconnects itself from the grid so you have your own supply. so i do find that strange even tesla solar i think does that
go watch Will Prowse videos, he'll teach you 10 times what this guy knows about Solar and that Solar will cost less then HALF the price of Ecoflow products, 3 months ago I assembled my first solar battery, for about $2,200 bucks I built a 14.3 KwH battery pack compatible with virtually every 48v inverter out there, you could add something like an EG4 6000XP to that battery and have a unit that has double the solar input and double the battery capacity and almost the same output as a Ecoflow Delta Pro Ultra and would be less then 4 grand vs the DPU at over 6k.
Have literally experienced this, myself and neighbour across the road have solar, our small part of the neighbourhood went off for 17 days in Dec cause a substation popped.
I don't see why lots of solar videos, or build videos or cat house videos etc are a potential problem for the channel. You've definitely got a lot of talent as a builder/problem solver, and you know how to present it in an interesting way. So just do what interests you. Not that I'm arguing against computer-related content in any way.
I for one dont care about teslas or solar panels... its boring new technology, i like old or retro tech! I dont mind a couple of these, i might even watch them, but i can imagine other retro freaks like me would be getting fed up with all the non-8bit stuff!
@@50shadesofbeige88 yeah, David has one of the toughest crowds around. And the funny thing is that this is pretty much how his channel has always been run. I’ve been watching since he was filming in a walk-in closet. Sure, he leaned in to what was most popular when the channel really took off, but the randomization of a “motivated hobbyist” like David reminds me a lot of myself and my little side projects. I find it interesting and approachable. I love other channels like Adrian’s Digital Basement and LGR, but they can often feel a bit… linear.
@@brantwedel the algorithm chasing days are over, it doesn't really matter all that much to follow the booklet guides from a decade ago. in fact you can ruin your channel with those, what you really just need are people organically interested in your videos. stats watching can be especially toxic for an old channel that has 800k+ subs that are inactive accounts. it's not that half of your subs aren't interested or youtube is suppressing you from them or something, it's that half of those accounts aren't active at all. the toxicity that it can do ones mind is that they'll start to think that it's all worthless even when their typical video is wildly successful and eventually goes to hundreds of thousands of views. 8bit guys subs aren't even vocal on average, but to the creator 1000 are indistinguishable from 100k. it's "just a lot of".
As someone that lives in that zone, and was dead center for the eye of Beryl - and Alicia in '83 (same path until well north), I will say straight out that much of the problem wasn't with Centerpoint, but rather with all the SOBs that don't think that they shouldn't have trees growing in or near their power lines. Many of them are RICH SOBs that moan about how they love how pretty their oak trees are, then immediately go on the attack when their own idiotic choices cause hardships for them. The big difference between Alicia and Beryl is simply additional construction. Same sort of impact, but where I live is now closer to a million people. Back then, maybe 80,000? Lots of big ranches and farms, that were basically forced out by the county to build subdivisions.
Please be careful with more or less noxious gases when using your emergency burning devices for heating and lighting. Keep the home well ventilated. Keeping doors open to unwindowed rooms.
You can get USB powered "hot jackets" or "hot vests" (for wearing under other clothes). They heat only you, which may cause damp problems, but in an emergency that's not exactly a priority. They run for hours on a 10,000mah battery. I crammed a 30,000 one in the pocket of mine and had it on full for about 5 hours, using only 25% of the battery!
@@michaelmartin9022 Also: Blankets + Ski underwear. Completely passive and VERY cheap compared to any solar battery tech. All you need is not have them be wet.
In Belgium the "nobody pays for the grid" is solved in 2 ways. - For analog meters, people with solar panels pay a fixed grid fee based on their inverter strength. - For digital meters, people sell any excess electricity at an agreed price while buying any shortfall electricity at a different price. Some of the difference in price is grid fees.
in most of europe with opened up electricity sales competion the grid companies are separate. this does lead to problems because the grid company does in fact have defacto monopoly - this is leading into problems in finland for example, like, fine, the electricity providers and the electricity market and reselling market being competed, that part is good - but the grid itself shouldn't have been privatized without much stringent controls.
@@lasskinn474 I mean, the grid itself is a natural monopoly. I don't know about other countries, but here in Ireland, the company running the grid was kept under state ownership when the market was opened up, and that's worked pretty well. Now, this might be in part down to what happened when the national telco was privatised as a single unit rather than the network being kept in public ownership: that did not go well at all!
Everybody should pay a grid fee, and then be allowed to go to wholesale prices if they have a battery. That way you can sell power when demand is highest, and make back the grid fees, or most of the time, even more. My bills are still negative most months.
In the United States, some markets are already prorating the power that the utility company "buys back." As it stands, setting aside some state program, you're looking at 15 years to get your investment back. Once the rates adjust, that becomes 20, 30, 40 years, and the number of people installing them drops to zero. However, the adoption of EVs could change this rapidly. The increased need will allow the utility to use more consumer generated power.
Definitely not to the same scale, but I had a similar thing during a power outage. I have UPS's with decently large external batteries on all my computers / network gear, etc. I was playing an online game with friends over voip and noticed my laptop across the room turned its screen on. Thought that was weird, whatever, and went back to playing. 15 minutes later I got up to get a drink or something, went to flick the room lights on, and realized when the light switch did nothing, that we were without power. Grabbed a flashlight, and the drink, and went back to playing. If I remember right, the outage was only an hour, so the batteries on all the ups's made it. And yes, I had the alarm silenced on the only ups I would have actually heard. The laptop turned on its screen because it was effectively 'unplugged' and thought someone was about to use it.
I guess his neighours soon also will have a power outage resistant installation. I wonder why in the USA nobody installs failsave installations. Here in Europe it is is standard or at least you can ask the guy installing the PVs to install a blackout save installation. The trick is that the inverter or a box connected to the inverter basically detects whether a blackout has occurred and then disconnects the house from the grid into "island mode" until the power is restored. That way the PVs and batteries can take over! This was one of the major reasons to get PV for us in the first place!
You don't need to become "The Solar Guy," but there is a big difference between the way you present solar and the way others do. You are much more practical about it, which means you're much more like the rest of us. So don't stop. You don't need to make a solar video every week, but it would be disappointing if you made none at all. A few each year would be enough.
@@DanTDMJace oh no, that part I get, i'm talking about the "climate cultist" part, like, isn't man-made climate change an established fact by this point? How is believing it in anyway cult-like when there's heaps and heaps of data to support it?
I live in an apartment and not in the US, so not entirely comparable. But he basically uses as much power in a day as I do in an entire month. I do have friends who live in houses and their power usage is around 800 kWh a month, which is still way less.
To be fair it is including charging 3 electric cars. Still 40kWh to cooling so clearly room for heavy improvement by insulating and sun shade. I spend around 80kWh a day to keep my house warm in January, and my house is not very well insulated.
That's the thing I cannot get over with this stuff. The houses in his neighbourhood seem to treat the climactic conditions as a temporary inconvenience, rather than designing around them.
I can't even imagine those numbers. I live in quite a big house by french standards (130 M2),reasonably insulated but far from passive. Ok, I don't have any e-car and live in a temperate climate, but...most of days I'm betwin 10 and 15 kWh, and my absolute max with heating (heat pump) at full blast is 40 kWh. Annual consomption is 4,8 MWh, therefore a mean of 13 kWh per day... before deducing the 1,3 MWh/y autoconsomption of my solar system. Insulating seems the first order of business in those situations, even more considering the constraints of climate. Sorry for what can be considered (and is, let's be honnest) unsollicited advice, but the numbers seems so mad !
It's a huge misconception that you get rid of your electric bill with solar. Power companies still charge you for being attached to the grid, charge you for having a meter, & charge you for your overnight use (unless you spend extra for a battery backup). Some don't even have buy back programs so if you bought a big enough system to make more power than you need you still can't get a zero bill. City power companies make it very difficult and expensive to get permitting or inspections.
I do too! It actually gives very interesting and useful info! I had no idea if you're connected to the grid, your solar panels will not work if the power goes down. I actually told him that at Classic Game Fest in Austin when I met him and bought a game he made. Really nice guy irl and real fun to chat with. Definitely recommend meeting him at any of the events he attends.
Suggestion, get an old analog mechanical 120VAC powered clock and plug it into a circuit that isn't on your batteries. Set the time and the A/C steady 60Hz frequency will keep the clock accurate but if the grid goes down the clock will stop and the clock not showing the current time will let you know you've had a power failure. The time difference will let you know when it happened.
Why clock when you can just make a panel with voltmeter and frequency meter? Old school electromechanical of course.Those will work for 100+ years non-stop.
@@ssl3546 ehhhh, they still manage to stick ~close enough~ most places. i mean all bets are off if you're in fuckin Texas, obviously, but here in MD my old Heathkit VFD clock from the seventies never really seems to drift by more than about a minute per year.
@@ssl3546 Looking at NERC documents such as BAL-003-2 - "Frequency Response and Frequency Bias Setting" and BAL-001-TRE-2 - "Primary Frequency Response in the ERCOT Region" (both dated 2020) I am not seeing any indication that NERC does not expect the grid to be run at 60 Hz +/- 0.036 Hz, as mentioned in those documents. Nor do I see how a grid _can_ be run without holding to a frequency reference, since that's the distributed control signal used to determine how much more or less power needs to be generated.
UK has a "standing charge" for being connected to the grid / water even if you don't use it. That's how you solve the problem of "no-one paying for maintenance".
Yeah, and the rising gas standing charge is what finally pushed me into getting an ASHP + induction hob. I don't even have a gas meter now, so no standing charge!
My friend lives in the UK and told me about your insane electric bills that had to be capped. That's no model to copy. Big mistake getting rid of nuclear.
@@HamburgerHelperDeath Having a standing charge hasn't caused our recent monumentally massive bills, the global energy market and our reliance on it now that coal is almost all decommissioned and our North Sea oil and gas is in decline. We've still got nuclear (it's Germany that got rid after they were spooked by Fukushima), we've just not built to replace the capacity that's been retired. And the new Hinkley C is hugely over budget
Many utilities have “delivery” and service charges isolated away from usage. As solar becomes more common not only are a lot of utility companies going this route but it’s getting more expensive. So just having power regardless of usage comes with a fee. Reduce utility rates and increase fees the non solar user doesn’t notice while the solar user will notice an increase to their bill even though they are using less power.
Residential grid infrastructure was built out assuming centralized power production and relatively uniform service and capacity, so they just bundled that into the per-kWh cost. In commercial / industrial hookups you'd have to buy a specific amount of peak grid capacity and then pay monthly, *forever*, for being able to suck down more power, regardless of how much power you're actually sucking. I suspect as more renewables come online you're going to see power grids either try to stop grid-tied solar (which is shortsighted IMO) or adjust their pricing to account for the new supply pattern so that everyone who bought grid-tied solar now needs to buy grid-tied batteries, too. The latter is more forward-looking but it's going to suuuuuck for everyone who got sold grid-tied solar, or worse, one of those weird financialized bullshit power purchase contracts.
I the UK we have a daily standing charge cost for having an electricity or gas network connection, in addition to the per kwh energy costs. This means you're paying for the network maintenance even if you don't use any energy. At the moment it's typically £0.60 for electricity connection and £0.31 for gas connection.
@@SuperSmashDolls Net-metered grid-tied solar's main problem is that it provides no incentives for the producers to use electricity at the moment they are generating it. I think that if time-variable pricing affected both the utility and residential generators, then net metering would be workable. 1 kWh generated at solar noon would be compensated less than 1 kWh generated at 6PM local time, and usage patterns would naturally adjust. That doesn't require residences with grid-tied solar to buy batteries like some municipalities now require - that type of thinking is short-sighted. Batteries are always an option, but demand response is a wonderful thing. Solar residences would heat water and charge EVs when their solar panels were generating the most power and producing the least profit. Never underestimate the power of financial incentives rather than strict regulations.
AC is just a one-way heat pump. Two-way heat pumps (air or geo) only help reduce heating costs by being more efficient than resistive heating. Reducing cooling costs would require actual structural changes to the house.
54% of my power coming from the grid goes to my A/C (110 Kwh since the first of the month), but i'm only pulling about 300ish Kwh's a month from the grid and my internet, home security, lighting and fridge are run 100% off grid for over 3 months now, i'm surprised his is that high considering all the EV's he has. A/C and Water Heater are the 2 biggest costs in a monthly power bill, I have an Emporia Vue2 connected in my main panel so I can monitor power usage.
I think a large part of the AC consumption comes from the US construction standards. I live in Greece where, let's be honest, the summer temperatures are quite comparable with most areas in the south east part of the US. I live in a traditional stone house, the kind you see on postcards, painted white with blue widows. The walls are 80 cm thick (I don't know how much it is in Darth Vador units). The idea is to play with thermal inertia. The walls slow down the ingress of heat in the day and cold during the night. As a result the daily cycle of t° variations is out of phase inside of the house making air conditioning useless. Modern housing is not using that property at all but relies on thermal insulation which is not working because of the thin construction materials and all the large openings in modern houses making AC obligatory. The all thing boils down to construction costs vs usage costs. The constructor does not care about you electricity bill. But he cares about his profit margin.
I'd just say screw it and move a microwave to a room with power. It's not like they weigh very much, probably less than the old CRT monitors he hauls out all the time. If the microwave is a permanent install, then I guess I'd have a second one for times like this -- or for if the first one dies and it's inconvenient to arrange immediate replacement. I mean, usually the first thing that goes on any microwave is the turntable motor. Don't throw those away, they're just less convenient to use when you have to stop and rotate the food yourself. It's better than a candle! Also a microwave without a functional turntable is fine for heating up your drink, as long as you know where the hot spot is.
Hi, theres 2 things i want to point out. First, keep in mind that the power you are generating is in DC. You use AC for your appliances. The conversion is not perfectly efficient. Second, your window AC can be used for heating up a room if you flip it around. Its actually an highly efficiend heating device. Its basically a "dumb" heatpump.
It's likely not going to be very good at it, and it may very well damage the unit. The system components and design pressures are sized to work at certain tenperatures, if you flip the unit and its significantly colder outside than a house would be expected to be, that sizing goes out the window and you can get liquid condensing in the compressor which will damage it. Heat pumps are designed to account for a wider range of temperatures but that's also why they're more expensive.
80-90% efficiency of a free, functionally infinite power source is pretty great. I wonder how long he could have pushed it by suppling DC from the other battery once the panels dropped below 100W production. The DC->AC->DC conversion cycle sheds 20-40% of the energy to heat too early. Maybe another two hours of runtime?
@@Kandralla Actually AC units can be very good at heating, depends on the model, but the panasonic splitter ACs I have in my house are very good and efficient for heating until -5c. Not that I use them very often for heating, given I have a dedicated heatpump doing the job and on top it also heats my water, but many nordic countries use air2air heatpumps for heating and over here in central europe also many air water heatpumps are used for summer cooling in inversion mode. But southern Europe and Japan also use this method of heating. They use their Air2Air Heapumps (aka ACs) for cooling in summer and heating in winter!
Got Starlink recently and had the same thing happen but with internet. I was waiting for my friends to join a lobby and get into a game and none of them showed up... Turns out the entire network in the city was down and I was the only one with working internet.
I think they if there's some way he should put a sensor on the power grid such that if the grid itself goes out it automatically notifies him so he knows to immediately just go into low power mode.
Totally agree about purely grid tied systems that go dark in a blackout. I had to look around for ages for an alternative. I’ve got a Victron system (they were originally designed for boats I think). It’s grid tied under normal use, letting me charge batteries and export my surplus. But it’s got instant failover if the grid goes down, which completely isolates me and runs from the batteries and solar. Cost me a pretty penny, but it’s definitely the best of all worlds!
I have Enphase for 8 yrs now, Before there batteries, there system now can island itself without battery backup. That said grid down isn't really a problem, as you can always rewire it to dc if need be. I have 4.8 kw on my house that can make over 27 kw per day.In 7 yrs it's made 38 mwh, that's not counting the end of 17, when it was installed, only maintenance, I clean panels 2 times a yr.
Interesting to see the priorities of solar power systems in different locations. Here in Sydney our grid is so insanely reliable I don't even need to really consider power loss for my solar and battery system. My Hybrid inverter however does have an emergency power outlet which I'll eventually wire up in case SHFT, and I might connect just the fridges to them. But ironically, it's probably statistically more reliable to just leave my fridges and freezers on the mains when we go away, because there is probably more likelihood the hybrid inverter could fail than the mains going down for a full day (never happened in my entire lifetime in Sydney).
I looked up the price of a KWH...it said it was $0.35 in Sydney....it's $0.13 a KWH here in the US Midwest where I live. I lived in Sydney from 2007-2011 but I can't really remember what my elec bill was then...
About grid stability/reliability: For cold countrys like Norway, Sweden, Finland etc many are very dependent on electricity to keep warm. Having very little battery backup if any, the availability of the grid is thus very important. These countrys have also moved away from above ground cables as much as possible for reliability reasons as well. An interesting note however is the grid-tie solar systems sold in these countrys have almost always a automatic changeover and capability of running with no grid available. I suppose this is also for the same reason: The importance of availability. It should be noted that the same countries are also trying to move away from woodfires as a heating option but most want to keep it as a backup.
I wish solar here in canada had a changeover option... but currently we do not, we actually have a small car battery sized 12 volt LiFe battery hooked to an inverter to keep some pumps for a boiler running when the power goes out like once a week or more in the winter out there (in the city is reliable, out in the countryside... not so much). but the solar panels do not in any way power the battery if the grid is down, the inverter charges the battery only from grid power which is fine since that normally happens when the panels are in at least some sun, but means that we would have to physically go up there and disconnect a panel from the grid tie micro inverter and run a DC cable to the battery and a charge controller for long term power outage... and then reconnect the panel to the grid tie inverter when the grid comes back.
In Sweden a lot of heating is independent of the power grid. In cities and towns there is very often district heating which also heats the hot water. In my city the heat is produced by burning garbage, but there is few different ways around the country. In more rural area they do sometimes use electrical heating, but many houses there also have fireplaces. I think the reliability is mostly due to the fact that everything electrical is underground in built-up areas. And the power companies have to pay their customers compensation for any outages, which is a big incentive for them to keep it reliable
Im 40 and all our Phone, Electric, etc (all wires) where i live, in little town here in Finland are underground. Not sure was it the war's or winterstorm's but they are away from the weather for sure.
@@KairuHakubi In cold countries many have an emergency stove and firewood as backup! But Europe normally has a very reliable grid. In the area where I live I can only remember one power outage longer than 30 minutes in my life and I am 53, and thats also the only power outage I remember my entire life coming from the grid. The other times the power was out, some house security switch switched off!
Oddly, solar is a GREAT way to heat water. Just not with electricity. It's easier to make hot water with solar directly. And since the hot water heater will retain that heat a long time, it's basically a thermal battery.
@@lukaszwodzynskiHNB Unless you want to take a shower. Then it's pretty DAMN essential! ^-^ I've had to take cold showers, and it aint no fun. Plus, you can do a solar hot water heater, that's easy. The sun loves heating up water. Back in the 80's, that was to go to way to save money on your electrical bill was to install a water heating solar panel. Do your laundry during the 12-1400 time range, and your water heater electric heating element should not even be needed.
Thanks for all this. I am 4 years away from moving to "last house" and I will defiantly have a combination of solar and batteries installed. Learned a lot from your adventures!
In Australia, we have very high uptake in solar panels on houses. What has happened is that as uptake improved (i.e. prices for solar systems came down) the feed-in tariff has gone down as well, so people relying on the feed-in tariff in the day paying for their grid usage at night, no longer have that happen. Now solar system batteries for homes are becoming more common, but also going for much, much biggers systems like 10-20kW solar systems on houses, giving such a huge surplus on power that the feed-in rates are viable again. What's happening with the grid is that as solar feed-in has grown in quantity and reliability, grids are now looking into investment in energy-storage systems, whether they be huge lithium battery rollouts, or alternate solutions like pumped hydro schemes. And with storage systems becoming available, green energy generation becomes viable, so hopefully we will see more investment in green energy options. So there are growing pains with solar systems tied to the power grid, but in the end it will hopefully benefit everybody. But having batteries per-house for when the local substation fails or the powerlines are knocked down by some accident is still good for emergency preparedness.
They’re trying to use batteries to balance the grid as the insane amount of Solar we have out there is causing issues. They’re also going to tax the feed-in tariffs. But David’s not wrong that it is unsustainable without additional work. I don’t personally see the benefit of the home batteries as they currently exist (mostly due to cost), but do like the idea of using an EV for this purpose if it ever gets approved.
Can confirm, as someone who worked in the solar industry for a few months recently, solar uptake in Australia is ridiculous and the DNSPs can't keep up
@@dennisneo1608 Not never but not like USA. Doesn't get below 0C (32F) almost anywhere. No tornado's. In the north coast area - North of Brisbane and up we have cyclones/hurricanes but relatively few Australians live in those areas. Strong winds / Bush fires / Floods are the major issues, typically these don't hit major population areas, and they are rare (usually) for any given area. I was in a hotel in France (near Geneva) and the power failed. They had no backup generator. They provided torches so you could get to your room - and those that had charged phones could use them. We were assured all was well. The next morning still no power..... all the emergency lights had run out of the battery power during the night sometime. They are so used to a stable power supply they have no contingency plans - like hiring a generator when they do occur - and that is for a major hotel chain..... In Aus they are required to have backup power.
You make a good point a lot of people miss when designing a solar setup: In a real emergency situation where you need as much power as possible, you can easily move around your portable panels to follow the sun - this is the benefit over roof/fence mounted.
4:00 - thats not the solarpanels fault - that is the way you choose to bill the customers. In my country, being connected and using the grid is one bill - using electricity is another..
I live off-grid in rural South Australia and have had similar experiences . The first experience the entire state went down after a severe storm, it took down High voltage pylons causing a grid shut down cascade . I only new after seeing Facebook messages, I live on a hill near some coastal flats there was only one other light about 10 klm away the local town 5klm away was dark and no light pollution from anywhere.
What’s the plan for the arcade? Anything on the books to have it be resilient? Sales pitch during outage: “power out? No Internet or gaming? Well now, we thought about that! Come on down and arcade all day on our solar powered games!”
Do you really think the amount of power those devices consume are similar, and do you think communication with the outside world is important in an emergency?
Everything he left off the batteries with the exception of the microwave is on a 220 line, and the microwave is probably the highest amp draw of the house's 110 appliances. The AC is a big enough achievement, and yes ac is on his system in the studio in an emergency.
Love the title. I am an 8 bit guy myself. Loved your old into with the 8” floppy (warmed my heart). Love solar because I am learning much like the 8 bit world I started with in my career. All the best from north Texas.
I can't believe how much energy David is using. 100kWh in a single day 😲. I spend 300 kWh in a whole month in July (with air conditioning when neccesary) and here the temperatures hover around 36 degrees Celsius in the summer.
When he said that I thought the cars would be a MUCH bigger slice of the pie chart than they were. Why do I get the feeling that the house/studio is terribly insulated causing the air conditioning to run almost permanently to keep on top of the heat coming in? I was running some fast maths in my head and at current rates in the UK, 100KwH would run you to between £20 and £30 per day! Up to a grand a month just for power is mind boggling to me. Texan homes must be seriously inefficient...
I think people in the USA is more used to waste energy than here in Europe. I heard they really have central air conditioning units working continuously every single day, and never open windows. And that's probably just one of several reasons that would explain such high energy consumption. I was in NYC once and it surprised me watching from my hotel's room one of the skyscrapers with all its lights turned on all night long even though nobody was working there. It's really excessive.
It also seems nobody over there dries their washing on lines outside anymore, it's always the dryer and that uses a lot of energy. Also the insulation required in a house in Texas is less than would be installed in a garage over here.
@@jouniinvelez7469 if anything houses in Texas need to be more insulated. Insulation also keep heat OUT! Texas actually has a higher difference between comfortable inside and the outside temperature than Britain does -it’s just the other way around. Meanwhile my house in Blighty isn’t insulated at all…
Loved the video. Quietly rooting for you to encounter new power issues that you hadn't anticipated, so we can get some more solar videos. Sorry, not sorry.
Here in Florida we have to pay a minimum electric bill, even if the solar panels completely offset the electricity usage. I'm assuming this is to cover the costs of being connected to the grid. We have a household of seven people. With the solar panels, my electrical bill is just over $30 a month. My panels were offline for the month of June while waiting for an RMA on the box on the side of the house. My electrical bill for that month was over $500.00.
My record is 38kWh in one day, and that was with high temperatures of 36C (97F), and running 3 AC units the whole day and night in 200m2 house (2150 sq feet).
I would bet money his central HVAC unit is vastly oversized, which is a common problem in the US. Bigger is not necessarily better but it is less efficient.
Based on his usage breakdown, without the HVAC, EVs, or his studio, he'd only be using roughly 20 kwh/day. That's still over twice as much as you're using, but you'd need to account for other things to get a true "apples to apples" comparison. Are your stove/drier/water heater electric or gas? Natural gas hookups for those appliances are less common in hotter states here, and the electric versions of those appliances are quite hungry - especially in larger households with multiple users demanding them. I use about 16 kwh daily during summer months, but my house is probably half the size, is only occupied by me, has a gas drier and water heater, and no EVs. Finally, Missouri's climate, while still pretty warm, demands a bit less work from an AC than Texas's :)
That sheepish look on your face admitting you melted a hole on your bench after stating they are more or less idiot proof was priceless. Love the channel, please do more solar and survival gear videos, they are interesting and more and more relevant these days it seems.
Here in sweden i believe that the biggest difference is if the power is supplied via wires hanging in the air or if they are buried. A storm can knock down the poles, but buried cables can survive.
the two biggest points with emergency systems is that you need to test it as if there was an emergency and the emergency system should run in tandem with your main source since it is the best way to know when you emergency systems fails. the biggest thing for me is rotating your emergency food. that means your emergency food needs to be something you would actually eat. i personally keep a lot of canned food that i do eat or cook with. so many people do a emergency box and by the time they need it the food will be spoiled since was there for 10-15 years before it was needed.
I like your solar panel updates because they are real world tests and not hypothetical, I've really appreciated the effort and sharing your findings. If you have a final final update in a few years I won't complain.
Please don't stop with those solar videos :D we do love them just as much as your other content and hey you get free stuff because of your videos it's just a bonus for us as well as you! Also do what you love and want to do!
Don't worry David. Nobody here will call you _"8 solar panels guy"._ 'Cause we know that you have more than that 🤣 Nice video! Keep it up with good content as usual!
Switzerland inhabitant here. The "who pays for the grid?" answer here is: everyone connected. You pay 4 things with your bill. 1. The energy consumed 2. The distribution of the energy 3. The grid maintenance 4. Taxes Even if you consume no energy because you inject more than you consume, the other items will still be billed to you.
In the UK we have something called the "Standing charge" which is used to pay for upkeep of the infrastructure. Also the price we're paid for exporting electricity is always lower than the price we get charged for taking power off the grid. You do have to be really really careful with solar companies, we've had many scam companies.
I have iq8+ enphase micro inverters on my 13.5kW system with 30kwh battery back up. The iq8s can isolate from the grid and continue providing solar power if the grid goes down.
Yeah, this is really the future. This whole "grid-tied solar doesn't work when the grid is down" thing is mostly a solved problem for new installations. Smart inverters can operate in grid following and forming modes and use an automatic transfer switch to isolate the system from the grid when it's down (for safety). The battery is also helpful for partially addressing the "freeloading" issue, allowing you to self-consume during peak evening hours. The smart inverters also can provide grid frequency support, so they are required for new installations here in California (and Hawaii, IIRC), even if you need to set it up to be capable of operating off-grid.
A PSA might be a good idea. Resistive open element space heaters are one of the biggest causes of house fires here. Open flames are even more dangerous. We strongly discourage the use of both.
Final Solar video.... for now. Not complaining, i watch every single one of your videos and most of the things is before my time, it's just interesting. :)
For your argument about who is paying for the grid at 4:33. You seem to forget about the industrial customers who either pull far more than solar farms can provide, or need to use reactive power that can only be provided by having a rotating mass on the system
100 kWh per day, I have a similar sized UK bungalow made with standard construction [ thermal blocks with a brick skin ] and use on average 8.5 kW a day... Yes, 1/3 of the cost of you running your 3 cars. I cycle, live alone, use a 100 W fan as cooling for about 30 days of the year and the property is over 30 years old. I can imagine you are frugal David, but, the contrast is so stark!
I'll have to watch this later this week. Your videos are way too good to not give them my full attention. Right now I just want something to pass the time for half an hour, and this is not that. This is too good to be that. I'd feel bad scrolling over this without commenting this. It's good to know that something good will be on "TV" this coming weekend.
I'm going to suggest a camp stove that uses either propane or white gas. Propane is really clean and you won't have to wait 2h for your meal to get warm. I personally have a white gas stove, and im impressed with how little gas it takes to boil water. The white gas has no problems heating water either. I have used the white gas stove in the fireplace once duting a power outage to make breakfast.
I made a similar comment above. I love my white gas stoves. I own one 3-burner, one two-burner, and even a single-burner. More potential stovetop capacity than my actual kitchen! They are a bit scary for those not used to them, though.
I've lived in Sweden for 10 years, in the North, so in the Artic circle. I've seen about 7 power outages. most of the time its caused by thunderstorms. Thunderstorms here are very rare, but it goes to show whoever said Sweden electricity is reliable, doesn't have any idea about what its like in other countries where the weather is a lot more dynamic.
I moved from suburban Washington state to downtown in a small city. My power goes out less and outages are shorter. 3 years without an outage is pretty reliable. The real issue is how much that power costs. Resistive heat is ridiculously cheap when compared to fuel.
Residential dwellings share the grid with industrial/commercial power users. THEY will NEVER recoup all of their usage even if they install panels. IF all of the houses produce power i guarantee the demand will appear for it.
It's called over generation. It's also known as the Duck Curve. It's most obvious in California where the electric companies cut the power output of grid solar panels because they are producing too much. It will eventually get to the point that you will be paying to keep a power plant operational during the day because it isn't producing power but it still produces expenses.
Solar + battery == Nirvana. Once it becomes easy to use the car as the battery, at least as emergency, all is wonderful. We can even help hold up the grid. Our system has enough battery storage to run the entire house for quite a few hours, esp. if you notice the grid outage and cut back. I think this is totally sustainable.
Just casting my small vote saying i really enjoyed this video, and how you presented it all. I have grid solar, but am starting to look at how to stay powered during an outage - videos like yours contain helpful info and context.
I know this is gonna get buried and make no sense to some of you, but I just HAD to say that the thumbnail makes you look like a guitar youtuber showing off their new 10 string guitar.
A note on heating. As a New Yorker who survived Hurricane Sandy with newborn twins, we found the best way to heat the house was to boil pots of water, keep the lids on, and then relocate them throughout the house. Great if you have gas but no electricity like we did!
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I apologize for the bad audio in the office scenes. It came out terrible for some reason and I tried my best to fix it in post. Believe me, it sounded much worse in the original take.
Don't worry. its fine. I mean we have got used to the office noise.
I feel it would have taken 10-15 minutes to rerecord those lines, no ?
We demand more solar videos!
You did good, the only thing it sounds like it's missing is the lows (bass, which you could add a filter to artificially add back in). It reminds me of those older microphones used for radio that only caught the mids.
@@mitchv.7492 Shows how much he cares. He's only releasing monthly videos to keep patrons from unsubscribing.
Love how it's "Non essential appliances like the oven, essential appliances like computers" priorities are spot on 😂😂😂
I chuckled a bit too. But in terms of short term outages, its spot on. But for a longer outage, I would need a water heater.
I reckon David’s wife and daughter would have a different idea of ‘essential’ 😂
@@headwerkn I bet they are both geeks too lol since they live with a geek dad, they seem to be pretty connected which is nice for David since it seems like it's his hobby
It makes sense, his job/hobby is centered around computers and they take a fraction of the power an oven and washer/dryer would use.
An electric oven can use about 10 times the electricity of a computer. I suspect David switches over to a more power-conservative PC or laptop during outages.
You forgot to add "... for now." to the title.
Nerds are never done with stuff like this.
Everything is either permanently temporary or temporarily permanent.
Or when he figures out a use for that solar panel thats not connected to anything , lol
dudes in texas with power grids on par with the 1920's, he's def gonna need more solar panels.
he probably annoyed his wife with all these panels and tests so thats probably why he wont be upgrading it again lol
Yup. Also it's a nice to see this kinds of stuff from a different perspective. Other channels that specializes on these kinds of stuff kinda gets boring.
I honestly don't mind having more solar videos. I personally think they're entertaining and educational
the case for his friend i find odd on grid tide like ours is Generac we have 1 small battery and few that lest what i see pulls almost 6Kw on a good day but usually it's closer to 3kw but it will automatically go from grid to island mode when the grid fails which disconnects itself from the grid so you have your own supply.
so i do find that strange even tesla solar i think does that
Just waiting for a mini wind turbine for winter to get added to the system
go watch Will Prowse videos, he'll teach you 10 times what this guy knows about Solar and that Solar will cost less then HALF the price of Ecoflow products, 3 months ago I assembled my first solar battery, for about $2,200 bucks I built a 14.3 KwH battery pack compatible with virtually every 48v inverter out there, you could add something like an EG4 6000XP to that battery and have a unit that has double the solar input and double the battery capacity and almost the same output as a Ecoflow Delta Pro Ultra and would be less then 4 grand vs the DPU at over 6k.
Check out Hobotech, Will Prowse, Jasonoid and AskIveSolar. Those guys dedicate their lives to small scale offgrid stuff. They go into a lot of detail.
@1:19 "Hey, why does your house have power while all of ours don't?"
Every solar + battery backup homeowner's wet dream lmao
Have literally experienced this, myself and neighbour across the road have solar, our small part of the neighbourhood went off for 17 days in Dec cause a substation popped.
I don't see why lots of solar videos, or build videos or cat house videos etc are a potential problem for the channel. You've definitely got a lot of talent as a builder/problem solver, and you know how to present it in an interesting way. So just do what interests you. Not that I'm arguing against computer-related content in any way.
@@TechTimeTraveller to the TH-cam algorithm it matters a lot :/
I for one dont care about teslas or solar panels... its boring new technology, i like old or retro tech!
I dont mind a couple of these, i might even watch them, but i can imagine other retro freaks like me would be getting fed up with all the non-8bit stuff!
@@50shadesofbeige88 yeah, David has one of the toughest crowds around. And the funny thing is that this is pretty much how his channel has always been run. I’ve been watching since he was filming in a walk-in closet. Sure, he leaned in to what was most popular when the channel really took off, but the randomization of a “motivated hobbyist” like David reminds me a lot of myself and my little side projects. I find it interesting and approachable. I love other channels like Adrian’s Digital Basement and LGR, but they can often feel a bit… linear.
@@brantwedel the algorithm chasing days are over, it doesn't really matter all that much to follow the booklet guides from a decade ago.
in fact you can ruin your channel with those, what you really just need are people organically interested in your videos. stats watching can be especially toxic for an old channel that has 800k+ subs that are inactive accounts. it's not that half of your subs aren't interested or youtube is suppressing you from them or something, it's that half of those accounts aren't active at all. the toxicity that it can do ones mind is that they'll start to think that it's all worthless even when their typical video is wildly successful and eventually goes to hundreds of thousands of views.
8bit guys subs aren't even vocal on average, but to the creator 1000 are indistinguishable from 100k. it's "just a lot of".
@@50shadesofbeige88 Nice, polite way of saying there are a lot of assholes that only come to complain in his comment section!
00:01 Not planning to do any further upgrades to power infrastructure is very on brand for Texas.
💀 so true
As someone that lives in that zone, and was dead center for the eye of Beryl - and Alicia in '83 (same path until well north), I will say straight out that much of the problem wasn't with Centerpoint, but rather with all the SOBs that don't think that they shouldn't have trees growing in or near their power lines. Many of them are RICH SOBs that moan about how they love how pretty their oak trees are, then immediately go on the attack when their own idiotic choices cause hardships for them.
The big difference between Alicia and Beryl is simply additional construction. Same sort of impact, but where I live is now closer to a million people. Back then, maybe 80,000? Lots of big ranches and farms, that were basically forced out by the county to build subdivisions.
For the record, I think it is okay to keep making solar videos.
Or launch a separate channel for that, just like "8-bit keys" tells about outdated keyboards, MIDI synthesizers etc.
@@tapafon_redMaybe he could convert 8-Bit Keys into something like 8-Bit Extras and upload less scripted fun videos there
Please be careful with more or less noxious gases when using your emergency burning devices for heating and lighting. Keep the home well ventilated. Keeping doors open to unwindowed rooms.
You can get USB powered "hot jackets" or "hot vests" (for wearing under other clothes). They heat only you, which may cause damp problems, but in an emergency that's not exactly a priority. They run for hours on a 10,000mah battery. I crammed a 30,000 one in the pocket of mine and had it on full for about 5 hours, using only 25% of the battery!
The previous video did the test on co2 with those candles
@@michaelmartin9022 Also: Blankets + Ski underwear. Completely passive and VERY cheap compared to any solar battery tech. All you need is not have them be wet.
You know you're off-grid ready when you don't even notice the power went out
In Belgium the "nobody pays for the grid" is solved in 2 ways.
- For analog meters, people with solar panels pay a fixed grid fee based on their inverter strength.
- For digital meters, people sell any excess electricity at an agreed price while buying any shortfall electricity at a different price. Some of the difference in price is grid fees.
in most of europe with opened up electricity sales competion the grid companies are separate. this does lead to problems because the grid company does in fact have defacto monopoly - this is leading into problems in finland for example, like, fine, the electricity providers and the electricity market and reselling market being competed, that part is good - but the grid itself shouldn't have been privatized without much stringent controls.
@@lasskinn474 I mean, the grid itself is a natural monopoly. I don't know about other countries, but here in Ireland, the company running the grid was kept under state ownership when the market was opened up, and that's worked pretty well. Now, this might be in part down to what happened when the national telco was privatised as a single unit rather than the network being kept in public ownership: that did not go well at all!
Everybody should pay a grid fee, and then be allowed to go to wholesale prices if they have a battery. That way you can sell power when demand is highest, and make back the grid fees, or most of the time, even more. My bills are still negative most months.
That will never work in the USA. That model doesn’t allow the power company executives to get filthy rich.
In the United States, some markets are already prorating the power that the utility company "buys back." As it stands, setting aside some state program, you're looking at 15 years to get your investment back. Once the rates adjust, that becomes 20, 30, 40 years, and the number of people installing them drops to zero.
However, the adoption of EVs could change this rapidly. The increased need will allow the utility to use more consumer generated power.
Pffff, not even realizing the power went out for the whole neighborhood is a total gigachad move.
I imagine that after he realized he would do his best Dr. Evil impression with the lil' pinky and all "Muahahahhahahaaha" 🤙
Definitely not to the same scale, but I had a similar thing during a power outage. I have UPS's with decently large external batteries on all my computers / network gear, etc. I was playing an online game with friends over voip and noticed my laptop across the room turned its screen on. Thought that was weird, whatever, and went back to playing. 15 minutes later I got up to get a drink or something, went to flick the room lights on, and realized when the light switch did nothing, that we were without power.
Grabbed a flashlight, and the drink, and went back to playing.
If I remember right, the outage was only an hour, so the batteries on all the ups's made it.
And yes, I had the alarm silenced on the only ups I would have actually heard.
The laptop turned on its screen because it was effectively 'unplugged' and thought someone was about to use it.
I guess his neighours soon also will have a power outage resistant installation. I wonder why in the USA nobody installs failsave installations. Here in Europe it is is standard or at least you can ask the guy installing the PVs to install a blackout save installation. The trick is that the inverter or a box connected to the inverter basically detects whether a blackout has occurred and then disconnects the house from the grid into "island mode" until the power is restored. That way the PVs and batteries can take over!
This was one of the major reasons to get PV for us in the first place!
You don't need to become "The Solar Guy," but there is a big difference between the way you present solar and the way others do. You are much more practical about it, which means you're much more like the rest of us. So don't stop. You don't need to make a solar video every week, but it would be disappointing if you made none at all. A few each year would be enough.
The difference is that David is not a climate cultist signaling his virtue.
@@SanchoPanza-wg5xf what does this mean?
@@YahyaFalconHe's not doing it for the environment, it's because he is prone to power outages
@@DanTDMJace oh no, that part I get, i'm talking about the "climate cultist" part, like, isn't man-made climate change an established fact by this point? How is believing it in anyway cult-like when there's heaps and heaps of data to support it?
Holy shit 100 kWh per day is completely crazy for a house that size. You should really look into improving AC efficiency and possibly insulation.
I live in an apartment and not in the US, so not entirely comparable. But he basically uses as much power in a day as I do in an entire month.
I do have friends who live in houses and their power usage is around 800 kWh a month, which is still way less.
To be fair it is including charging 3 electric cars. Still 40kWh to cooling so clearly room for heavy improvement by insulating and sun shade. I spend around 80kWh a day to keep my house warm in January, and my house is not very well insulated.
I'm in Indiana and I use 350 KWH a month! HAHA Doesn't he have 3 electric cars? And Texas heat and AC
That's the thing I cannot get over with this stuff. The houses in his neighbourhood seem to treat the climactic conditions as a temporary inconvenience, rather than designing around them.
I can't even imagine those numbers. I live in quite a big house by french standards (130 M2),reasonably insulated but far from passive. Ok, I don't have any e-car and live in a temperate climate, but...most of days I'm betwin 10 and 15 kWh, and my absolute max with heating (heat pump) at full blast is 40 kWh. Annual consomption is 4,8 MWh, therefore a mean of 13 kWh per day... before deducing the 1,3 MWh/y autoconsomption of my solar system.
Insulating seems the first order of business in those situations, even more considering the constraints of climate.
Sorry for what can be considered (and is, let's be honnest) unsollicited advice, but the numbers seems so mad !
It's a huge misconception that you get rid of your electric bill with solar. Power companies still charge you for being attached to the grid, charge you for having a meter, & charge you for your overnight use (unless you spend extra for a battery backup).
Some don't even have buy back programs so if you bought a big enough system to make more power than you need you still can't get a zero bill.
City power companies make it very difficult and expensive to get permitting or inspections.
I think he did a great job of explaining why.
It's an exaggeration. It's more like you gotta pay much less during active hours.
I really enjoyed all the solar videos you’ve put out.
I do too! It actually gives very interesting and useful info! I had no idea if you're connected to the grid, your solar panels will not work if the power goes down. I actually told him that at Classic Game Fest in Austin when I met him and bought a game he made. Really nice guy irl and real fun to chat with. Definitely recommend meeting him at any of the events he attends.
Suggestion, get an old analog mechanical 120VAC powered clock and plug it into a circuit that isn't on your batteries. Set the time and the A/C steady 60Hz frequency will keep the clock accurate but if the grid goes down the clock will stop and the clock not showing the current time will let you know you've had a power failure. The time difference will let you know when it happened.
Why clock when you can just make a panel with voltmeter and frequency meter? Old school electromechanical of course.Those will work for 100+ years non-stop.
LMAO the grids have not maintained 60 hz for years now, NERC changed the rule in 2018. It adds a lot of cost. RIP to your analog mains clocks.
@@ssl3546 RIP to our power plants and industrial motors too because all of it is synchronized 60hz
@@ssl3546 ehhhh, they still manage to stick ~close enough~ most places. i mean all bets are off if you're in fuckin Texas, obviously, but here in MD my old Heathkit VFD clock from the seventies never really seems to drift by more than about a minute per year.
@@ssl3546 Looking at NERC documents such as BAL-003-2 - "Frequency Response and Frequency Bias Setting" and BAL-001-TRE-2 - "Primary Frequency Response in the ERCOT Region" (both dated 2020) I am not seeing any indication that NERC does not expect the grid to be run at 60 Hz +/- 0.036 Hz, as mentioned in those documents. Nor do I see how a grid _can_ be run without holding to a frequency reference, since that's the distributed control signal used to determine how much more or less power needs to be generated.
Next Video would have been : 8-Bit-Guy uses Commander X16 to manage home solar.
I'm not subscribing until he manages it from a VIC20!
Came here to say this ^^^
While petsci robots
UK has a "standing charge" for being connected to the grid / water even if you don't use it. That's how you solve the problem of "no-one paying for maintenance".
Yeah, and the rising gas standing charge is what finally pushed me into getting an ASHP + induction hob. I don't even have a gas meter now, so no standing charge!
@@danabc322 thats on my 'to-do' list...!!
"But that's socialism! Or worse: Taxation!"
My friend lives in the UK and told me about your insane electric bills that had to be capped. That's no model to copy. Big mistake getting rid of nuclear.
@@HamburgerHelperDeath Having a standing charge hasn't caused our recent monumentally massive bills, the global energy market and our reliance on it now that coal is almost all decommissioned and our North Sea oil and gas is in decline. We've still got nuclear (it's Germany that got rid after they were spooked by Fukushima), we've just not built to replace the capacity that's been retired. And the new Hinkley C is hugely over budget
Bruh, you could talk about paint drying and I'd watch. Looking forward to new adventures. This channel is always a relaxing surprise.
Many utilities have “delivery” and service charges isolated away from usage. As solar becomes more common not only are a lot of utility companies going this route but it’s getting more expensive. So just having power regardless of usage comes with a fee. Reduce utility rates and increase fees the non solar user doesn’t notice while the solar user will notice an increase to their bill even though they are using less power.
its just like "change to led bulbs and save money" nope, the bill is still the same.
More actually
@@jsnsk101 This is not really a correct comparison, nor is the conclusion you draw about the cost being the same.
Residential grid infrastructure was built out assuming centralized power production and relatively uniform service and capacity, so they just bundled that into the per-kWh cost. In commercial / industrial hookups you'd have to buy a specific amount of peak grid capacity and then pay monthly, *forever*, for being able to suck down more power, regardless of how much power you're actually sucking. I suspect as more renewables come online you're going to see power grids either try to stop grid-tied solar (which is shortsighted IMO) or adjust their pricing to account for the new supply pattern so that everyone who bought grid-tied solar now needs to buy grid-tied batteries, too. The latter is more forward-looking but it's going to suuuuuck for everyone who got sold grid-tied solar, or worse, one of those weird financialized bullshit power purchase contracts.
I the UK we have a daily standing charge cost for having an electricity or gas network connection, in addition to the per kwh energy costs. This means you're paying for the network maintenance even if you don't use any energy. At the moment it's typically £0.60 for electricity connection and £0.31 for gas connection.
@@SuperSmashDolls Net-metered grid-tied solar's main problem is that it provides no incentives for the producers to use electricity at the moment they are generating it. I think that if time-variable pricing affected both the utility and residential generators, then net metering would be workable. 1 kWh generated at solar noon would be compensated less than 1 kWh generated at 6PM local time, and usage patterns would naturally adjust.
That doesn't require residences with grid-tied solar to buy batteries like some municipalities now require - that type of thinking is short-sighted. Batteries are always an option, but demand response is a wonderful thing. Solar residences would heat water and charge EVs when their solar panels were generating the most power and producing the least profit. Never underestimate the power of financial incentives rather than strict regulations.
40% of your power is used by the AC alone? Jeez! I'm looking forward to the next era, The Geothermal Heat Pump Guy!
AC is just a one-way heat pump. Two-way heat pumps (air or geo) only help reduce heating costs by being more efficient than resistive heating. Reducing cooling costs would require actual structural changes to the house.
54% of my power coming from the grid goes to my A/C (110 Kwh since the first of the month), but i'm only pulling about 300ish Kwh's a month from the grid and my internet, home security, lighting and fridge are run 100% off grid for over 3 months now, i'm surprised his is that high considering all the EV's he has.
A/C and Water Heater are the 2 biggest costs in a monthly power bill, I have an Emporia Vue2 connected in my main panel so I can monitor power usage.
@@Tyneras While somewhat true, window units are super leaky and not particularly efficient
I think a large part of the AC consumption comes from the US construction standards. I live in Greece where, let's be honest, the summer temperatures are quite comparable with most areas in the south east part of the US. I live in a traditional stone house, the kind you see on postcards, painted white with blue widows. The walls are 80 cm thick (I don't know how much it is in Darth Vador units). The idea is to play with thermal inertia. The walls slow down the ingress of heat in the day and cold during the night. As a result the daily cycle of t° variations is out of phase inside of the house making air conditioning useless.
Modern housing is not using that property at all but relies on thermal insulation which is not working because of the thin construction materials and all the large openings in modern houses making AC obligatory.
The all thing boils down to construction costs vs usage costs.
The constructor does not care about you electricity bill. But he cares about his profit margin.
@@Hope_Boat 80cm is roughly 31.5 inches or just shy of 3 feet (36") thick
Mmm warm canned tuna cooked up on a candle. Just like Mom used to make.
I'd just say screw it and move a microwave to a room with power. It's not like they weigh very much, probably less than the old CRT monitors he hauls out all the time. If the microwave is a permanent install, then I guess I'd have a second one for times like this -- or for if the first one dies and it's inconvenient to arrange immediate replacement. I mean, usually the first thing that goes on any microwave is the turntable motor. Don't throw those away, they're just less convenient to use when you have to stop and rotate the food yourself. It's better than a candle! Also a microwave without a functional turntable is fine for heating up your drink, as long as you know where the hot spot is.
11:07 Non-essential: water heater, oven. Essential: Computer. Couldn't agree more 😄
Hi, theres 2 things i want to point out. First, keep in mind that the power you are generating is in DC. You use AC for your appliances. The conversion is not perfectly efficient. Second, your window AC can be used for heating up a room if you flip it around. Its actually an highly efficiend heating device. Its basically a "dumb" heatpump.
It's likely not going to be very good at it, and it may very well damage the unit.
The system components and design pressures are sized to work at certain tenperatures, if you flip the unit and its significantly colder outside than a house would be expected to be, that sizing goes out the window and you can get liquid condensing in the compressor which will damage it.
Heat pumps are designed to account for a wider range of temperatures but that's also why they're more expensive.
80-90% efficiency of a free, functionally infinite power source is pretty great.
I wonder how long he could have pushed it by suppling DC from the other battery once the panels dropped below 100W production.
The DC->AC->DC conversion cycle sheds 20-40% of the energy to heat too early. Maybe another two hours of runtime?
@@Kandralla Actually AC units can be very good at heating, depends on the model, but the panasonic splitter ACs I have in my house are very good and efficient for heating until -5c. Not that I use them very often for heating, given I have a dedicated heatpump doing the job and on top it also heats my water, but many nordic countries use air2air heatpumps for heating and over here in central europe also many air water heatpumps are used for summer cooling in inversion mode. But southern Europe and Japan also use this method of heating. They use their Air2Air Heapumps (aka ACs) for cooling in summer and heating in winter!
We're finally entering the lunar phase of the 8 bit guy what a time to be alive.
Lunar phase? What is that?
@@monkeeseemonkeedoo3745The phase in which he uploads a video
@monkeeseemonkeedoo3745 it's a joke since it's his last solar(sun) video then all his new videos are going to be about the moon(lunar)
really funny how you didnt even notice at first
Got Starlink recently and had the same thing happen but with internet. I was waiting for my friends to join a lobby and get into a game and none of them showed up... Turns out the entire network in the city was down and I was the only one with working internet.
@@gazvlogs7459 i take it this is not the Starlink i'm familiar with
Gaming with ups: "why that light went off?" 😅
I think they if there's some way he should put a sensor on the power grid such that if the grid itself goes out it automatically notifies him so he knows to immediately just go into low power mode.
tbh I think the solar videos are as exciting as the other videos
NO!
@@DonnyHooterHoot yes >:)
I like the retro computer/tech videos.
I think they're pretty good, maybe one a year or something would strike a good balance.
A Good Mix of both is good
Totally agree about purely grid tied systems that go dark in a blackout. I had to look around for ages for an alternative.
I’ve got a Victron system (they were originally designed for boats I think). It’s grid tied under normal use, letting me charge batteries and export my surplus. But it’s got instant failover if the grid goes down, which completely isolates me and runs from the batteries and solar.
Cost me a pretty penny, but it’s definitely the best of all worlds!
New Enphase stays online with batteries
I have Enphase for 8 yrs now, Before there batteries, there system now can island itself without battery backup. That said grid down isn't really a problem, as you can always rewire it to dc if need be. I have 4.8 kw on my house that can make over 27 kw per day.In 7 yrs it's made 38 mwh, that's not counting the end of 17, when it was installed, only maintenance, I clean panels 2 times a yr.
@@dustydawson8977 yes sunlight backup is cool
Remember when this guy said he’d never do paid episodes. Good times.
That reenactment though....
tremendous casting. the reenactor looks just like him
@@RoamingAdhocrat Shame we didn't see the rest of the neighborhood without power...
The 8-Based Guy!
You are the 8bit guy, but I love geeking out on these solar videos from you. Maybe just make it a yearly thing.
As I've hit 'retro computing burnout' on youtube i've loved your solar videos a ton
Same
time to retrobrite your enthusiasm for computing videos. please get into the driveway peroxide bath
Check out EEVBlog. He’s on a solar journey too. He went with rack mount LiFePo4 batteries connected to a hybrid inverter.
@@RoamingAdhocratlol
Knowing that you are not a "solar TH-cam channel" I still think you explain the content very well.
Interesting to see the priorities of solar power systems in different locations. Here in Sydney our grid is so insanely reliable I don't even need to really consider power loss for my solar and battery system. My Hybrid inverter however does have an emergency power outlet which I'll eventually wire up in case SHFT, and I might connect just the fridges to them.
But ironically, it's probably statistically more reliable to just leave my fridges and freezers on the mains when we go away, because there is probably more likelihood the hybrid inverter could fail than the mains going down for a full day (never happened in my entire lifetime in Sydney).
I looked up the price of a KWH...it said it was $0.35 in Sydney....it's $0.13 a KWH here in the US Midwest where I live. I lived in Sydney from 2007-2011 but I can't really remember what my elec bill was then...
David: I don't want to be known as "the solar guy"
Also david: *got EIGHT solar panels on his studio building*
c o i n c i d e n c e ?
Another great video by The 8 Solar Panel Guy.
About grid stability/reliability:
For cold countrys like Norway, Sweden, Finland etc many are very dependent on electricity to keep warm. Having very little battery backup if any, the availability of the grid is thus very important.
These countrys have also moved away from above ground cables as much as possible for reliability reasons as well. An interesting note however is the grid-tie solar systems sold in these countrys have almost always a automatic changeover and capability of running with no grid available. I suppose this is also for the same reason: The importance of availability.
It should be noted that the same countries are also trying to move away from woodfires as a heating option but most want to keep it as a backup.
you guys need propane
I wish solar here in canada had a changeover option... but currently we do not, we actually have a small car battery sized 12 volt LiFe battery hooked to an inverter to keep some pumps for a boiler running when the power goes out like once a week or more in the winter out there (in the city is reliable, out in the countryside... not so much). but the solar panels do not in any way power the battery if the grid is down, the inverter charges the battery only from grid power which is fine since that normally happens when the panels are in at least some sun, but means that we would have to physically go up there and disconnect a panel from the grid tie micro inverter and run a DC cable to the battery and a charge controller for long term power outage... and then reconnect the panel to the grid tie inverter when the grid comes back.
In Sweden a lot of heating is independent of the power grid.
In cities and towns there is very often district heating which also heats the hot water. In my city the heat is produced by burning garbage, but there is few different ways around the country.
In more rural area they do sometimes use electrical heating, but many houses there also have fireplaces.
I think the reliability is mostly due to the fact that everything electrical is underground in built-up areas. And the power companies have to pay their customers compensation for any outages, which is a big incentive for them to keep it reliable
Im 40 and all our Phone, Electric, etc (all wires) where i live, in little town here in Finland are underground. Not sure was it the war's or winterstorm's but they are away from the weather for sure.
@@KairuHakubi In cold countries many have an emergency stove and firewood as backup!
But Europe normally has a very reliable grid. In the area where I live I can only remember one power outage longer than 30 minutes in my life and I am 53, and thats also the only power outage I remember my entire life coming from the grid. The other times the power was out, some house security switch switched off!
Love that a water heater is deemed non-essential while computers are essential
Oddly, solar is a GREAT way to heat water. Just not with electricity. It's easier to make hot water with solar directly. And since the hot water heater will retain that heat a long time, it's basically a thermal battery.
@@franek.kedziorek in Texas, water is hot and warm. Water heater is really just not essential
A water heater is basically a battery, so unless you want to use more than 50 gallons of water, i'd say it isn't essential
@@lukaszwodzynskiHNB Unless you want to take a shower. Then it's pretty DAMN essential! ^-^
I've had to take cold showers, and it aint no fun.
Plus, you can do a solar hot water heater, that's easy. The sun loves heating up water. Back in the 80's, that was to go to way to save money on your electrical bill was to install a water heating solar panel. Do your laundry during the 12-1400 time range, and your water heater electric heating element should not even be needed.
Thanks for all this. I am 4 years away from moving to "last house" and I will defiantly have a combination of solar and batteries installed. Learned a lot from your adventures!
The timerift arcade restorations are main channel worthy for anyone that misses that content from here.
In Australia, we have very high uptake in solar panels on houses. What has happened is that as uptake improved (i.e. prices for solar systems came down) the feed-in tariff has gone down as well, so people relying on the feed-in tariff in the day paying for their grid usage at night, no longer have that happen. Now solar system batteries for homes are becoming more common, but also going for much, much biggers systems like 10-20kW solar systems on houses, giving such a huge surplus on power that the feed-in rates are viable again.
What's happening with the grid is that as solar feed-in has grown in quantity and reliability, grids are now looking into investment in energy-storage systems, whether they be huge lithium battery rollouts, or alternate solutions like pumped hydro schemes. And with storage systems becoming available, green energy generation becomes viable, so hopefully we will see more investment in green energy options.
So there are growing pains with solar systems tied to the power grid, but in the end it will hopefully benefit everybody. But having batteries per-house for when the local substation fails or the powerlines are knocked down by some accident is still good for emergency preparedness.
They’re trying to use batteries to balance the grid as the insane amount of Solar we have out there is causing issues. They’re also going to tax the feed-in tariffs. But David’s not wrong that it is unsustainable without additional work.
I don’t personally see the benefit of the home batteries as they currently exist (mostly due to cost), but do like the idea of using an EV for this purpose if it ever gets approved.
Same here in the UK looking to install a multi MWh battery by me in North Wales as part of massive solar farm
Can confirm, as someone who worked in the solar industry for a few months recently, solar uptake in Australia is ridiculous and the DNSPs can't keep up
Australia never has emergencies!
@@dennisneo1608 Not never but not like USA. Doesn't get below 0C (32F) almost anywhere. No tornado's. In the north coast area - North of Brisbane and up we have cyclones/hurricanes but relatively few Australians live in those areas. Strong winds / Bush fires / Floods are the major issues, typically these don't hit major population areas, and they are rare (usually) for any given area.
I was in a hotel in France (near Geneva) and the power failed. They had no backup generator. They provided torches so you could get to your room - and those that had charged phones could use them. We were assured all was well. The next morning still no power..... all the emergency lights had run out of the battery power during the night sometime. They are so used to a stable power supply they have no contingency plans - like hiring a generator when they do occur - and that is for a major hotel chain..... In Aus they are required to have backup power.
I'm sad to see the retirement of The Solar Guy.
That video of you jogging in jeans already lives in my head rent free and now this one of you eating this non-steaming Compleat is gonna add to it
The jeans jogging is one of the most unintentionally hilarious things I have ever seen
Double Gross
Ok, I guess you’re going to make me watch now.
Ever seen 8 Bit guy YTP Productions? He used that clip A LOT
the clip is so random you know someone's gonna use it
You make a good point a lot of people miss when designing a solar setup: In a real emergency situation where you need as much power as possible, you can easily move around your portable panels to follow the sun - this is the benefit over roof/fence mounted.
4:00 - thats not the solarpanels fault - that is the way you choose to bill the customers. In my country, being connected and using the grid is one bill - using electricity is another..
I live off-grid in rural South Australia and have had similar experiences . The first experience the entire state went down after a severe storm, it took down High voltage pylons causing a grid shut down cascade . I only new after seeing Facebook messages, I live on a hill near some coastal flats there was only one other light about 10 klm away the local town 5klm away was dark and no light pollution from anywhere.
What’s the plan for the arcade? Anything on the books to have it be resilient?
Sales pitch during outage: “power out? No Internet or gaming? Well now, we thought about that! Come on down and arcade all day on our solar powered games!”
Green arcade... we run on our own energy from the sun...
"non-essentials" like AC, dishwasher and stove and "essentials" such as computers and TVs. lol, I bet Mrs, 8-bit doesn't agree with that.
lol.
Computers draw a heck of a lot less power tbf. Not worth trying to run any of those appliances well on backup power.
Do you really think the amount of power those devices consume are similar, and do you think communication with the outside world is important in an emergency?
Everything he left off the batteries with the exception of the microwave is on a 220 line, and the microwave is probably the highest amp draw of the house's 110 appliances. The AC is a big enough achievement, and yes ac is on his system in the studio in an emergency.
Aloof husband and practical wife, a classic trope.
Love the title. I am an 8 bit guy myself. Loved your old into with the 8” floppy (warmed my heart). Love solar because I am learning much like the 8 bit world I started with in my career. All the best from north Texas.
3:40 "Never heard anyone else mention". Dude. Alec from Technology Connections is your literal personal friend. O.o
I can't believe how much energy David is using. 100kWh in a single day 😲. I spend 300 kWh in a whole month in July (with air conditioning when neccesary) and here the temperatures hover around 36 degrees Celsius in the summer.
When he said that I thought the cars would be a MUCH bigger slice of the pie chart than they were. Why do I get the feeling that the house/studio is terribly insulated causing the air conditioning to run almost permanently to keep on top of the heat coming in?
I was running some fast maths in my head and at current rates in the UK, 100KwH would run you to between £20 and £30 per day! Up to a grand a month just for power is mind boggling to me. Texan homes must be seriously inefficient...
Wondering the same. I'm using 1500 kWh a year. His amount would cost something like 1000 euros a month over here.
I think people in the USA is more used to waste energy than here in Europe. I heard they really have central air conditioning units working continuously every single day, and never open windows. And that's probably just one of several reasons that would explain such high energy consumption.
I was in NYC once and it surprised me watching from my hotel's room one of the skyscrapers with all its lights turned on all night long even though nobody was working there.
It's really excessive.
It also seems nobody over there dries their washing on lines outside anymore, it's always the dryer and that uses a lot of energy. Also the insulation required in a house in Texas is less than would be installed in a garage over here.
@@jouniinvelez7469 if anything houses in Texas need to be more insulated. Insulation also keep heat OUT! Texas actually has a higher difference between comfortable inside and the outside temperature than Britain does -it’s just the other way around. Meanwhile my house in Blighty isn’t insulated at all…
Well in a real emergency I would set my thermostat to 80 in the summer.
Yeah, 72 is really pretty low even for everyday use, let alone maintaining that in a power constrained emergency.
8-Bit/Solar guy: I doubled my capacity since we last met...
That was when he became the 16-Bit/Solar guy.
Loved the video. Quietly rooting for you to encounter new power issues that you hadn't anticipated, so we can get some more solar videos. Sorry, not sorry.
Here in Florida we have to pay a minimum electric bill, even if the solar panels completely offset the electricity usage. I'm assuming this is to cover the costs of being connected to the grid. We have a household of seven people. With the solar panels, my electrical bill is just over $30 a month. My panels were offline for the month of June while waiting for an RMA on the box on the side of the house. My electrical bill for that month was over $500.00.
Yikes!
100 kwh pr day 😮, i live in denmark and don’t have ev charger and air conditioner, but the on a really high day i am using 8kwh
I am also shocked Im from germany and we use about 15 kWh on a bad day, althogh we don't use AC and heat our water and the house via Heatpumps...
That’s Texas y’all…
My record is 38kWh in one day, and that was with high temperatures of 36C (97F), and running 3 AC units the whole day and night in 200m2 house (2150 sq feet).
I would bet money his central HVAC unit is vastly oversized, which is a common problem in the US. Bigger is not necessarily better but it is less efficient.
Based on his usage breakdown, without the HVAC, EVs, or his studio, he'd only be using roughly 20 kwh/day. That's still over twice as much as you're using, but you'd need to account for other things to get a true "apples to apples" comparison. Are your stove/drier/water heater electric or gas? Natural gas hookups for those appliances are less common in hotter states here, and the electric versions of those appliances are quite hungry - especially in larger households with multiple users demanding them.
I use about 16 kwh daily during summer months, but my house is probably half the size, is only occupied by me, has a gas drier and water heater, and no EVs. Finally, Missouri's climate, while still pretty warm, demands a bit less work from an AC than Texas's :)
When i first saw it pop on my screen i thought it said 8 bit guy last video and i had a little heart attack 😂
That sheepish look on your face admitting you melted a hole on your bench after stating they are more or less idiot proof was priceless. Love the channel, please do more solar and survival gear videos, they are interesting and more and more relevant these days it seems.
Here in sweden i believe that the biggest difference is if the power is supplied via wires hanging in the air or if they are buried.
A storm can knock down the poles, but buried cables can survive.
the two biggest points with emergency systems is that you need to test it as if there was an emergency and the emergency system should run in tandem with your main source since it is the best way to know when you emergency systems fails.
the biggest thing for me is rotating your emergency food. that means your emergency food needs to be something you would actually eat. i personally keep a lot of canned food that i do eat or cook with. so many people do a emergency box and by the time they need it the food will be spoiled since was there for 10-15 years before it was needed.
I like your solar panel updates because they are real world tests and not hypothetical, I've really appreciated the effort and sharing your findings. If you have a final final update in a few years I won't complain.
Those wraps on your Teslas are something else!
Just got home from work, and right on cue there was a notification of a new 8-Bit Guy video. And a half-hour one at that. What a treat! Thanks, David.
Please don't stop with those solar videos :D we do love them just as much as your other content
and hey you get free stuff because of your videos it's just a bonus for us as well as you! Also do what you love and want to do!
Don't worry David.
Nobody here will call you _"8 solar panels guy"._
'Cause we know that you have more than that 🤣
Nice video! Keep it up with good content as usual!
Now he needs to be known as the 8 solar array guy!
Quite sad to not be seeing any more of The Solar Guy
Too late as soon as he said it 😂
@@edwardbell8771 Solar guy is dead, killed by the 8 bit guy and his pixel gun!
Switzerland inhabitant here. The "who pays for the grid?" answer here is: everyone connected.
You pay 4 things with your bill.
1. The energy consumed
2. The distribution of the energy
3. The grid maintenance
4. Taxes
Even if you consume no energy because you inject more than you consume, the other items will still be billed to you.
where does the 'surplus' solar power go, if everyone produces a surplus? It's lost.
Honestly, the best idea you gave me in this video was to use floor tiles as shelf surfaces when building my own furniture! I love your creativity.
"I like to keep around shelf-stable food"
With what looks like Petscii Robots breakfast cereal?
5:19 do I keep hearing DYI???
All day buddy
Light work
Also "optical angle"
In the UK we have something called the "Standing charge" which is used to pay for upkeep of the infrastructure.
Also the price we're paid for exporting electricity is always lower than the price we get charged for taking power off the grid.
You do have to be really really careful with solar companies, we've had many scam companies.
I have iq8+ enphase micro inverters on my 13.5kW system with 30kwh battery back up. The iq8s can isolate from the grid and continue providing solar power if the grid goes down.
Yeah, this is really the future. This whole "grid-tied solar doesn't work when the grid is down" thing is mostly a solved problem for new installations. Smart inverters can operate in grid following and forming modes and use an automatic transfer switch to isolate the system from the grid when it's down (for safety). The battery is also helpful for partially addressing the "freeloading" issue, allowing you to self-consume during peak evening hours. The smart inverters also can provide grid frequency support, so they are required for new installations here in California (and Hawaii, IIRC), even if you need to set it up to be capable of operating off-grid.
A PSA might be a good idea. Resistive open element space heaters are one of the biggest causes of house fires here. Open flames are even more dangerous. We strongly discourage the use of both.
These SOLAR videos are some of your BEST! I hope you don't stop them. Thanks!
I loved the ''Unsolved Mysteries'' reenactment...!
Final Solar video.... for now.
Not complaining, i watch every single one of your videos and most of the things is before my time, it's just interesting. :)
I need more solar videos. Great reenactment
Aww. I loved this series. Please don’t hesitate to make more series in the future. Or other emergency preparedness videos. They really do help.
Bummer. Your solar videos are my favorite
Those little Midea U-shaped air conditioners are fantastic.
They are quiet but the blower is weak
You sure could have used a neck air conditioner while building this project
Those don't really work. Watch Computer Clan's video about it
For your argument about who is paying for the grid at 4:33. You seem to forget about the industrial customers who either pull far more than solar farms can provide, or need to use reactive power that can only be provided by having a rotating mass on the system
100 kWh per day, I have a similar sized UK bungalow made with standard construction [ thermal blocks with a brick skin ] and use on average 8.5 kW a day...
Yes, 1/3 of the cost of you running your 3 cars. I cycle, live alone, use a 100 W fan as cooling for about 30 days of the year and the property is over 30 years old.
I can imagine you are frugal David, but, the contrast is so stark!
TBF my buddy lives in the UK and electricity is insanely expensive now
I'll have to watch this later this week. Your videos are way too good to not give them my full attention. Right now I just want something to pass the time for half an hour, and this is not that. This is too good to be that. I'd feel bad scrolling over this without commenting this. It's good to know that something good will be on "TV" this coming weekend.
Something's wrong with the sound on this video.
2:00 the power went out in Texas? Color me shocked
I'm going to suggest a camp stove that uses either propane or white gas. Propane is really clean and you won't have to wait 2h for your meal to get warm. I personally have a white gas stove, and im impressed with how little gas it takes to boil water. The white gas has no problems heating water either. I have used the white gas stove in the fireplace once duting a power outage to make breakfast.
I made a similar comment above. I love my white gas stoves. I own one 3-burner, one two-burner, and even a single-burner. More potential stovetop capacity than my actual kitchen! They are a bit scary for those not used to them, though.
My bet is that Techmoan tampered with the electrical system.
I'm sure that will be addressed in the next 8 bit guy YTP.
MORE SOLAR VIDEOS! More emergency prep! I love your organized and educated approach to the topic
Glad to see your solar setup finalized!
I've lived in Sweden for 10 years, in the North, so in the Artic circle. I've seen about 7 power outages. most of the time its caused by thunderstorms.
Thunderstorms here are very rare, but it goes to show whoever said Sweden electricity is reliable, doesn't have any idea about what its like in other countries where the weather is a lot more dynamic.
I moved from suburban Washington state to downtown in a small city. My power goes out less and outages are shorter.
3 years without an outage is pretty reliable. The real issue is how much that power costs. Resistive heat is ridiculously cheap when compared to fuel.
Residential dwellings share the grid with industrial/commercial power users. THEY will NEVER recoup all of their usage even if they install panels. IF all of the houses produce power i guarantee the demand will appear for it.
It's called over generation. It's also known as the Duck Curve. It's most obvious in California where the electric companies cut the power output of grid solar panels because they are producing too much. It will eventually get to the point that you will be paying to keep a power plant operational during the day because it isn't producing power but it still produces expenses.
Solar + battery == Nirvana. Once it becomes easy to use the car as the battery, at least as emergency, all is wonderful. We can even help hold up the grid. Our system has enough battery storage to run the entire house for quite a few hours, esp. if you notice the grid outage and cut back. I think this is totally sustainable.
Just casting my small vote saying i really enjoyed this video, and how you presented it all. I have grid solar, but am starting to look at how to stay powered during an outage - videos like yours contain helpful info and context.
That compleats stuff looked absolutely disgusting!
I know this is gonna get buried and make no sense to some of you, but I just HAD to say that
the thumbnail makes you look like a guitar youtuber showing off their new 10 string guitar.
I like your solar content more than your retro tech content
He keeps saying "DYI" and it's driving me nuts man. Still love you tho, 8BG
Do Yourself It solar power
A note on heating. As a New Yorker who survived Hurricane Sandy with newborn twins, we found the best way to heat the house was to boil pots of water, keep the lids on, and then relocate them throughout the house. Great if you have gas but no electricity like we did!
OH HEY, A NEW SOLAR GUY VIDEO!