Granholm: We Have to ‘Use’ War to Move to Clean Energy, Before War, Many of Us Hoped We’d Focus ‘Solely on Clean Energy’

Breitbart ^ | 03/31/2022 | Ian hatchett

[RckyRaCoCo]

Whitmer is our latest witch.

[Jacob Kell]

Uh, I heard you this first time. :-)

[Old Retired Army Guy]

I have a hard time believing this “Ding Dong” was once the Governor of a fairly large State. Then again, look who is Governor of that State now !

[MurrietaMadman]

Since when are we on a war footing?

Trump calls himself 'wartime president' in battle with 'invisible enemy'

You mean it's over? We're back to normal?

[Eleutheria5]

Your administration’s obsession with “clean energy” is what has caused this war in Ukraine. Foe Brandon’s fecklessness and cowardice on the one hand, and big talk on the other, is what is exacerbating it further, and threatening to expand it. Walk noisily and carry a small stick is a deadly policy when dealing with a megalomaniacal dictator who wants his country’s empire back. Add nuclear arms and MAD to the equation, and “clean energy” is the very last thing you should be worried about.

[SpokeshaveReturns]

Also a huge volume of first generation solar panels head for the scrap yard.

[SpokeshaveReturns]

[1Old Pro]

An evil witch, she is.

It's a prerequisite to be part of Brandon's team.

[bert]

Progressives are the existential enemy.

There can be no co existence

[Fledermaus]

Clean my butt. Dirtier.

[Carriage Hill]

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and to remove all doubt.

[PA-RIVER]

I’m in the same boat. I have about 18 panels.
I used to buy about 500 gallons of oil before the panels.
Now I buy about 100. I have a bunch of electric radiators. When it gets down below 20, the oil furnace starts kicking in.

It will take a long time to get my money back, but I bought the panels thinking that the price of energy will go up fast. And it is. As electric cars start to move to the grid, prices will go up. And I also bought stock in electric companies and oil companies immediately after Bidung stole the election. The Greens told me I was crazy, and that the Oil companies were finished! That they would go down in value and be gone, LOL. In one year I have more than doubled my money in that investment.

[Tell It Right]

You and I think a lot alike, with perhaps a little tweak on investment strategy. You didn't explicitly state it, but you seem to be striving what I'm striving for -- a certainty on energy costs. Buy paying up front (buying the solar system) we're making at least that much of the costs fixed -- with less of the costs uncertain and at the whims of inflation and bureaucrats.

When I set up a financial plan to buy my panels, I took out a HELOC (2nd mortgage) to pay for it. Each month I count my home energy costs as power bill + HELOC payment, where before it was power bill + natural gas bill (I've since converted my nat gas appliances to high efficiency electric ones). That was 11 months ago in May 2021.

My HELOC + power bill is more than the $300/month I was paying for power bill + nat gas in 2019 (the year I count as a basis year). So I pull the difference from the HELOC. That adds some to the balance of the HELOC, but not as much as the payment lowers the balance. And as the HELOC balance is paid down, the HELOC payment goes down with it. About a year from now I'll average my HELOC payment + power bill being about the $300/month I was paying in 2019 for power bill + nat gas. That's my hedge against energy inflation in the Brandon years (plus only God knows what it'll be like after Brandon).

When my power bill + HELOC is less than $300/month, I put the difference into a simple investment account I set up with the proceeds from selling the nat gas appliances. Nothing fancy, just mutual funds in large cap value and bonds (I'm expecting a market downturn). I'll do the same with the $8,4000 tax credit for installing solar last year whenever my tax refund comes. After the S&P 500 drops at least 30% (I might stretch that to 40% if the downturn is slow like 2008 and 2000's downturn was) I'll move the investments to growth funds. Never paying extra on the HELOC to pay it off early -- when the HELOC is about to expire I'll pay it off from the solar investment account and have money left over. I expect the investment account balance to equal the HELOC (the point the solar system and appliance upgrades pay for themselves) that to be about 7 years from now (it would be about 9 years from now if I was using the excess to pay directly to the HELOC balance).

I have 32 panels 320W each (total 10kW) with 30kWH battery storage. Plus, because I live in the south and my winters aren't harsh, I heat and cool my house with a variable speed heat pump (with heat strips for the few nights it gets too cold for the heat pump). My variable speed heat pump, combined with my hybrid water heater (the water heater has a built-in heat pump on it to slowly but efficiently reheat the water in the 50 gallon tank) makes a slow draw on my power panels. Because that's a slow draw, my house's overall power draw rarely exceeds the 9kW continuous power my inverter can supply without having to pull from the grid. (Before I replaced my A/C unit with a variable speed heat pump, the A/C would draw over 4kW, meaning just running the clothes dryer on high with 6kW would make my inverter pull at least 1kW from the grid plus whatever other power was needed for the rest of the house.)

I no longer worry about natural gas rates going up (except the effect it has on power rates because as Obama shut down coal plants and they were replace with natural gas powered plants, power bills rise as nat gas rises). I worry only half as much as I used to about power rates going up with me buying only 44% of my power.

I'm about to upgrade my solar and buy an EV. I'll double my panels and triple my battery storage (take with a grain of salt the "double" of panels because the new panels won't be in as optimum position as the original ones, I'm expecting only 70% of the throughput in the winter that I get from the others). I'll probably produce 85% to 90% of all the power consumed, even with an EV and driving it ~200 miles per week (assuming the EV's we're looking at get about 90% of the miles per kWh the manufacturers claim). Instead of $300/month I'll count the expected budget as $450/month (in 2019 I was paying ~$150/month to drive my old used pickup about ~200 miles per week). It'll add 6 months to a year to when the entire project pays for itself.

The main goal is so that mine and my wife's energy budget maintains what we paid in 2019 with no inflation as we try to cut costs in retirement without cutting our lifestyles. Even when the HELOC is paid off I'll still budget the $450/month -- putting the excess into the solar investment account. I'll use that to eventually maintain and upgrade the solar system.