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Technology Connections - You are being misled about renewable energy technology. (www.youtube.com)

submitted 2 days ago by negativenull@piefed.world to c/solarpunk@slrpnk.net

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Amazing video by Technology Connections. It's a long one, but don't miss his 30 minute angry rant at the end.

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[-] Mycatiskai@lemmy.ca 8 points 16 hours ago

It is pretty standard in most electric cars I've been in that it shows the kWh/h as it charges and how many kWh it has charged when complete.

Also your comment reminds me of the Boots economic theory. That poor people pay more overall because keep buying cheap boots yearly rather than spend more once on expensive boots every 10 years like the rich.

A captured government is the problem, the corrupt administration and the purchased opposition can't do anything for you like cheap power and subsidized electric cars because it doesn't help their donors.

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml -1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

dude relentlessly rags on democrats for helping republicans fuck things up then says everyone should vote for them.

he is a very thorough and smart guy though, he will 100% figure this out if he wants to.

[-] KeenFlame@feddit.nu 0 points 5 hours ago

Hello your government is evil, do something

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

who said i'm usian?

[-] rekabis@lemmy.ca 35 points 1 day ago

I have been watching his videos for years with great enthusiasm.

If I ever meat him, it won’t be a handshake. That rant at the end deserves a hug. I love that antifascist energy that came pouring off him.

[-] VibeSurgeon@piefed.social 53 points 1 day ago

Just when I thought I couldn't like him more, he goes and drops this gigabased rant.

TC for U.S president honestly

[-] thomasloven@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

I like the guy. Really. But haven’t you seen what happens when people from entertainment become president?

[-] drmoose@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

His works is way beyond just entertainment though. He talked about this in this very video.

[-] pahlimur@lemmy.world 4 points 12 hours ago

Now that I've seen the type of people that seek political positions over a few decades, I would push Alec to run for some sort of local office. He's the exact opposite of the majority of assholes who enter politics.

[-] rarbg@lemmy.zip 5 points 15 hours ago

Like Zelenskyy? Sign me up

[-] argarath@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago

Or even a governor or senator, he has the right ideas and ability to explain what is happening and what needs to be done

[-] Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 day ago

That level of competence would never fly in the US government.

[-] kunaltyagi@programming.dev 4 points 16 hours ago

Most governments

[-] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 68 points 1 day ago

That rant at the end really sums up my feelings as a Midwestern leftist. Hell the whole thing does honestly. But you treat people right, you make prudent decisions, and you treat labor with dignity and respect.

I also really respect him for accepting when something that had been obvious to him (the value proposition of solar and electrification) turned out to have not been obvious to others so he cut the snark and explained his reasoning. It's an admirable display of character. But also, yeah it had been obvious to me as well.

Probably not my favorite video of his, but definitely rhe one I respect the most

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 day ago

I know it's not the main point of his video, but I really wish he'd looked into the CapEx vs OpEx stuff a bit more.

For example, when talking about how much fuel his car uses in its lifetime vs. the cost of buying solar panels, he makes it clear that the solar panels are a better investment than buying gasoline. But, what he doesn't talk about is the difficulty for a lot of people in coming up with the money up-front to make that investment. Especially if you're poor, finding $25 per week to put gas in your car is easier than spending $3000 up front to put solar panels on your house. I know later he makes the argument that it might not even make sense to put solar panels on your house. But, that up front cost is also there for buying an electric vehicle vs. buying a car with an ICE (fuck ICE). The Nissan Cube he showed had a starting price of $18k when it was last available new in 2014. The Ioniq 5 starts at double that, at more than $36k. As far as I can tell, you can't get a new electric car for less than $30k, whereas the cheapest gas cars are only $23k or so.

A big reason for the status quo is that paying small amounts constantly is possible when you're poor, but paying a big up front cost to go electric isn't. What's worse (and goes with the last half hour of his video), is that we're in this situation because the fossil fuel companies keep getting subsidies, whereas any subsidies for electric cars or photovoltaic panels keeps getting shut down.

Also, I know it's an American channel so it has to use things like "gallons", but please when talking about energy, use Joules, not "kilowatt hours".

[-] drmoose@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Nah americans are very familiar with debt being the country with the most personal debt in the history of the world. If only they took debt for investment not for buying a new truck.

This is entirely on people's lack of trying.

[-] CureMaple@slrpnk.net 1 points 6 hours ago

Vime's Boots Theory

[-] Zagorath@aussie.zone 3 points 16 hours ago

fwiw there's a comment by @Mycatiskai@lemmy.ca as a top-level reply to the post that I think was intended as a reply to you.

kWh are a metric unit (even if they're not SI), and are extremely common in discussions of household electricity. I wish it weren't the case, the same way I wish countries other than Australia used kilojoules for measuring energy in food instead of (kilo)Calories. But they don't.

[-] spacesatan@leminal.space 9 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

No. Why would anybody have an intuitive frame of reference for what a joule is.

This appliance uses 1 kilowatt, running it for an hour is a kilowatt hour. Easy.

*And I can't even find anything suggesting any countries meter electrical bills by the joule so ???

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 2 points 13 hours ago

This appliance uses 1 kilowatt. Running it for 1 second uses 1 kJ. Easy.

Are you billed by the hour, or by the month?

[-] spacesatan@leminal.space 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

By the kilowatt hour per month.

If you're talking about systems that generate and consume power measured in watts. Why would you then convert to joules so that you can say 'this generates ___ joules per hour' when you could just infer kwh from the nameplate wattage. It's an extra conversion for no reason.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 hours ago

Why would I care about "Joules per hour"? What matters is power (Watts), and total energy used (Joules). "Kilowatt hour per month" is just an awkward way of saying "Joules per month"

[-] Evil_Incarnate@sopuli.xyz 3 points 17 hours ago

A kilowatt hour is 3.6 megajoules. It's used for the same reason lightyears are used to measure distances in space, it's easier to say Alpha Centauri is 4.396 light years away than 4.159x10^16 metres.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Astronomy uses special units because the SI units are more than 10 orders of magnitude different. You'd have to use really exotic prefixes like "zetta" or "yotta" if you wanted to keep using metres.

The difference between a kilowatt and a megajoule is just 3 orders of magnitude. You just have to switch from "k" to "M". People are already familiar not only with "M" but with "G" and "T" because of Megabytes, Gigabytes, Terabytes, etc. There's nothing about kilowatt hours that's more intuitive or easy to use.

[-] spacesatan@leminal.space 1 points 6 hours ago

kilowatt hours ARE more intuitive than watt seconds when talking about something like solar panels, electric cars, and household energy where generation and consumption are better understood on the scale of hours.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago

No they're not. You're just used to them.

[-] spacesatan@leminal.space 1 points 32 minutes ago* (last edited 15 minutes ago)

Are you seriously trying to say that if you're talking about a solar panel it makes more sense to talk about how much energy it produces per second than per hour. If you wanted to think about the amount a panel can produce per day are you sitting there thinking about how many seconds of sunlight it will get in a day.

If you want to estimate the energy usage of a 400 watt lighting system during an 8 hour workday you think it's more intuitive to go (400 * 3600 * 8)/1,000,000 than 0.4 * 8?

The reason seemingly every electrical utility in the world uses kWh is because hours are the more intuitive unit of time for this context.

[-] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 32 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

My partner does Energy research and Kilowatt hours is a very common unit of measurement she has to deal with. Its not even non-standard. It uses S.I. units, even if I find it odd. Has nothing to do with U.S. customary units Americans use.