Backup power.

[Dirk]

35 cent gas seems like a good deal until you realize that people got paid $5 per hour.

Gas is now 10x as expensive, and people are still making $5 per hour (or close to it, but the ratio is way off). $15 minimum wage just failed, again, when, according to your math (and decency), minimum wage should be $50 per hour!

If people had a time machine to go back to the past, I suspect that more than 90% of all people would choose not to go and that 90% of people who did choose to go would soon regret it.

I think that might be true, but it wouldn't be a decision that is based on what is good for them. Look at how fat we are. People decide three times a day to do something that is bad for them.

I can't argue the rest of your points. Except this (an old argument): technology is evolving faster than the wisdom for using it is. And while technology evolution will continue to speed up exponentially, the ability for humans to evolve will remain constant, as it has been, and continue to get farther and farther behind. I don't think that bodes for a brighter future, no matter how "neat-o" the next big thing will be...

But I do appreciate your optimism.

 

[PoolGate]

Gas is now 10x as expensive, and people are still making $5 per hour (or close to it, but the ratio is way off). $15 minimum wage just failed, again, when, according to your math (and decency), minimum wage should be $50 per hour!


I think that might be true, but it wouldn't be a decision that is based on what is good for them. Look at how fat we are. People decide three times a day to do something that is bad for them.

I can't argue the rest of your points. Except this (an old argument): technology is evolving faster than the wisdom for using it is. And while technology evolution will continue to speed up exponentially, the ability for humans to evolve will remain constant, as it has been, and continue to get farther and farther behind. I don't think that bodes for a brighter future, no matter how "neat-o" the next big thing will be...

But I do appreciate your optimism.

Gas is like $2/gallon here and min wage is $14.

 

[JamesW]

The higher the wages, the more incentive that companies have to replace people with automation or outsourcing.

$15 per hour is really $20 by the time you consider all costs that the employer has to pay.

Amazon is working to fully automate the warehouses and deliveries.

Uber will replace all drivers with full self driving as soon as they can.

Pretty soon, it will only be executives and programmers at companies like Amazon and Uber.

Everything on the operations side will be fully autonomous.

The more the wages go up, the faster and harder they work to get rid of people.

With so many people working from home, A.I is being trained to do the job because everything is virtual and digital.

Most posts that I post are written fully by A.I and no one seems to notice (including this one).

 

[Dirk]

Your A.I is not very "I" then, as it has been arguing with my toaster for the last several posts...

 

[Dirk]

Gas is like $2/gallon here and min wage is $14.

Ratio...
35¢ is to $5
as
$2 is to $28.57

Though my point wasn't about the math per se. Households now require two working parents. We're in more debt than ever before. Health care is plummeting, yet costs are soaring. Technology has not eased those burdens, as it once promised. Kids are latchkey, screen-addicted nincompoops. Adults and kids are not happier or healthier than they once were. Just one guy's opinion based on a very narrow view of the world, though broader than some based on my travel. I've met a lot of happy people in other countries. They don't have more stuff, they just enjoy what they do have better.

Don't get me wrong. I love the tech. I'm neck-deep in it. I think it can offer the path to a better quality of life. I just don't think we've as yet identified that path...

 

[cowboycasey]

I have a whole house 1800 RPM diesel backup generator at 24kw, it will run anything I can throw at it including the electric hot water heater and 5 tons of AC at the same time and do it for weeks at a time.. The engine is loud but no louder than a diesel truck running and way quieter than a generic running at 3600 RPM.. Speaking of those type gens, please be aware that after running 100 hours you have to shut it off and get it serviced or the warranty is void....

I also have a manual 200 amp transfer switch to go from main power to gen power, that means when I get my solar connected I can run solar with the power company or when I run the gen..

We just had a 6 hour stint with no power, fired up the gen and sat it a nice warm house, took showers, did laundry all for less than 6 grand in my gen...

I am looking at this type solar system 3.85 kW Grid Tied Solar System with Enphase IQ7A Microinverters and 10x Heliene 385w Panels | Unbound Solar

 

[Dirk]

24kw for $6K. That's very interesting. That makes more sense to me than a battery, for my use case. At least for now. Where I could put it, close to the breaker box, would likely only annoy one neighbor. Who I could probably grease with some shared electricity during a blackout... Maybe he'd even go in on it with me... Hmmm...

 

[JamesW]

Adults and kids are not happier or healthier than they once were.

That’s really hard to judge. People are living longer than ever and people can choose to live healthier lives if they want. Most people’s lives have been pretty bleak over the past several hundred years. Most people worked in horrible conditions for very low pay. The lives were often described as nasty, brutish and short. I think that if we went back in time, we would be very dissatisfied with the quality of life. It’s difficult to see since we are not there. We have so much more today than we ever had before. We can now access virtually any information in real time. Scientific breakthroughs happen all the time. The current time is the best it has ever been and it’s only going to get better, but it’s up to us to make that happen.

 

[Dirk]

I can't argue that. Though I wasn't thinking going back hundreds of years. Maybe 50-70. My mother got "the promise." We grew up low-mid-class. Roof, clothes, food, but nothing fancy. She did that alone, on a teacher's salary. She was able to save money, and she lived to 98 with with a nice retirmerment income and full benefits, first-class medical. I don't think that can currently be recreated by a lot of folks. That is my reference. That is my narrow view.

I think scientific breakthroughs have, and can continue to improve our quality of life, but I think a lot of that quality is being siphoned off by corporate greed. So maybe part of my complaint is not with tech, but rather how it is being dispensed and who gets the most benefit from it...

 

[jseyfert3]

Totally need to agree with @Dirk here. Would I want to go back in time a few hundred years? No, things were undoubtedly terrible compared to now. But I’ve read a lot of things showing that the upward trend of things getting better started stagnating in the 70’s and 80’s. Somewhere around there, real wage growth (after inflation) on average became pretty dang flat. Some things have gotten better, some worse.

So basically things aren’t bad, relative to a few hundred (or even a hundred) years ago, but they aren’t really getting better either in many ways, even though economies keep growing and one may logically assume things comm should continue improving for everyone in that case...

I can’t complain, our household income is well above average, but I also understand that I’m the exception, not the rule.

That's probably reasonable because they have to listen to the noise.

Why can't they make a quiet generator?

NG generators make a ridiculous amount of noise.

Does anyone know of a quiet generator?

There’s no technical reason a NG generator would be any more or less noisy than a gasoline one. But making engines quiet costs money for noise insulation, better designs that vibrate less, and mufflers. And noise is not something most people think about when it comes to standby generators, they just want power, so the manufacturers aren’t gonna make them quiet if people won’t care to pay the cost needed to make them quiet.

Someone mentioned the 7000 series Honda. That’d probably be the quietest generator out there, and while not a 24 kW “run everything” could run enough to make you quite comfortable for most power outages, minus the AC system. I don’t have experience with that but I do have a Honda EU2200 “suitcase” generator, it’s quieter than most portable generators (considerably so compared to construction generators), especially when it idles down with no load.

Our power here is quite reliable, so I have no intentions of installing a whole house generator. Worst case I can run the fridge and chest freezer off the Honda via extension cords. Did that very thing actually when my breaker panel started melting not long after we bought our house...

Keep an eye on ITER in France. I've been watching it since 2008. They go first plasma in 2026... it's been a long hard slog and I think this is the closest thing to the dilithium crystals for most people alive today!

Yeah but the start date keeps getting shoved back again and again. Wasn’t it originally supposed to start running prior to 2020?

 

[cowboycasey]

24kw for $6K. That's very interesting. That makes more sense to me than a battery, for my use case. At least for now. Where I could put it, close to the breaker box, would likely only annoy one neighbor. Who I could probably grease with some shared electricity during a blackout... Maybe he'd even go in on it with me... Hmmm...

Mine was a used light generator that is perfect for a backup generator, they have some hours on them but for what you need they are great... I just found this 24kw that has an enclosure that you would barely hear over the pool pump It would be more than mine but I do not have an enclosure and mine is older.. There may be a place in Cali that reman's or rebuilds them locally...

{% CurrentDocument.GetValue(

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www.generatorsource.com

 

[mguzzy]

The entire earth will be modeled in a functional Matrix level digital twin and all of it will be watched by A.I agents that will understand everything and operate everything.

Any other era has got to have better music than now. I'll gladly jack into the matrix if I don't have to listen to Doja Cat and Dua Lipa.

 

[JamesW]

I think that we can agree that it is better in some ways and probably worse in some ways.

At the end of the day, it is what it is and we need to figure out what we want it to be in the future and how to get there.

The challenges and opportunities are bigger than ever before and it's up to us to make it as good as possible for everyone.

 

[santacruzpool]

Reminds me of my ACT essay question:

Write an essay if you agree or disagree with the following statement.
"The more things change the more they stay the same"

18 year old me wrote that as the world changes, and advances, there is no way it is the same anymore. So I didn't agree with the statement - you can't put the genie back in the bottle.

35 years later I am not so sure ---

 

[Dirk]

Mine was a used light generator that is perfect for a backup generator, they have some hours on them but for what you need they are great... I just found this 24kw that has an enclosure that you would barely hear over the pool pump It would be more than mine but I do not have an enclosure and mine is older.. There may be a place in Cali that reman's or rebuilds them locally...

{% CurrentDocument.GetValue(

description

www.generatorsource.com

Ah, used. Better than a used car, I take it, in terms of having to worry about where it's been or how hard it's been "driven." 20 hours in ten years. That doesn't sound too used to me.

 

[Dirk]

I think that we can agree that it is better in some ways and probably worse in some ways.

At the end of the day, it is what it is and we need to figure out what we want it to be in the future and how to get there.

The challenges and opportunities are bigger than ever before and it's up to us to make it as good as possible for everyone.

On that we can agree. Though all I've come up with so far is working from home and banning screens for kids. It's a start.

Though... I have a swimming pool so that doesn't help my footprint...

 

[cowboycasey]

Ah, used. Better than a used car, I take it, in terms of having to worry about where it's been or how hard it's been "driven." 20 hours in ten years. That doesn't sound too used to me.

Used is a great thing, they do have to inspect it and make sure it is in good working order.. good glow plugs, no blow back, no pressure loss in the cylinders and do a load bank power test to ensure it is working correctly... A new one is way up there but it would be there for your lifetime and your kids and maybe your grandkids lifetime...

 

[Dirk]

Casey, who is "they" in "they do have to inspect it?" The buyer, the seller? Is it like taking a used car to your mechanic before you buy it?

 

[cowboycasey]

They being the company selling it and giving the warranty (if any) I was actually had by a bad employee 2 times with my gen....

the first time they sold me my gen the guy did nothing to the used gen except paint it and put it in the back of my truck, the glow plugs were shot, the oil was not changed, the filters were old and the generator end did not make power... complete Crud show... took it back to them and forced the owner to make good on a gen... boy did they not like it but they did it...

2nd gen, they made on site, it is the one I have now but the guy did not connect the engine to the generator end inside the block.. it worked great until it hit 15kw then the shaft would slip and create a great little noise... Took it back to them and the guy who worked on them before was fired because he was inept and they figured out he did not know how to fix, build, or operate generators. he was winging it and pulled the wool over there eyes for about 6 months... they tore my gen apart and fixed the horror he had done.. now it works perfect but if I had not known or went to there throats with it they would not have done anything..

That is where new shines over used but it is more expensive...

 

[Dirk]

Yah, you might want to take that story out of the brochure...