High electric bill

[Jimbo327]

This is one of the Southern California Edison rate plan (Time of Use).

 

[FernFish]

That is positive pie in the sky thinking. Reality is not even close.
1 - we are losing generating capacity at a rapid pace, not gaining it.
2 - the development and operating cost of the "alternatives" is exponentially prohibitive.
3 - alternative energy sources are weather dependent... all of them.
4 - output capability of alternative energy sources is small compared to conventional
5 - the laws passed and going into effect over the next 10 years will exponentially load the power grid. Cars, grills, furnaces,. stoves, ovens, lawnmowers, and everything with a combustion engine on it or that burns fuel.

Add those simple things up and the absurdity of the situation presents itself. The problem is that the vast majority people do not understand the scale of the issue, including those pushing these ideas and agendas. It is mass ignorance being driven by happy talking points, a few of which you have presented.

This is not a technology problem, it is a problem of both scale and the limitations of physics.

But I digress -- it takes about 3 minutes to fuel an average car that will run roughly 400 miles on that fuel. If it takes the average person 4 hours to charge their car and the average electric car gets 200 miles on that charge, that is 8 hours vs 3 minutes of downtime.

How much productivity in this country will be lost when everybody is forced to go electric... or even 1/3 of the cars are electric?

Given the above ~120 million cars on the road per day (skipping commercial trucking and transportation) in the US alone;. Charging even a fraction of those cars daily with low current for 12-72 or more each is one thing and the demand is significant. This will bring the nation to a near standstill compared to today. Rapid charging doesn't solve it but makes it better, right? The problem becomes almost unsolvable when high current charging (40 mins to say 4 or so hours) on superchargers is needed. Delivering that much power density to that many people for that many chargers is a monumental task to which the scope and cost is unfathomable, even if generation could keep up.

You mentioned investment and paying for this? The costs are astronomical. Who pays for it? This thread is about the absurdity of the cost to run a fish tank in CA and other states now and it is only the tip of the iceberg. If the private sector "invests" then costs explode. If government "invests" then taxes explode. Nothing is free. Again, CAs energy prices, cost of living and tax rates right now are a direct result of the policies and actions to move mandate alternative energy and mandate sunsetting of anything combustion... and they just got started.


Solar still sucks at any scale worth talking about, both in power density and longevity. It has hovered around 17% average for decades and premium panels may net you a bit more. But it they only work when the Sun is out. Storage of that power in batteries is both costly and inefficient (10% to20% loss depending on the system) due to transformation losses in both directions. But ignore that... Care to take a stab at the area of coverage needed to power a small town, let alone a city? One where the cars, ovens, heat, lawnmowers, and everything else are electric? Solar is nice on your house if the sun is out and the government helped pay for the panels... that is about it.


In the kindest way... it is not that we disagree, I simply don't think you have a full grasp of the scale of any of this. Most people don't.

We have not touched on the "real" environmental impact of any of these either. The WHY are we doing this question begs itself when the broader picture is looked at from an environment scope, let a alone a financial or national (for any nation) sovereignty scope.

Feel free to DM me and we can have a kind conversation off thread - that goes for anybody. It is not going to get solved here for sure.

Doesn’t take eight hours, 30 minutes on a fast charger, we can just use nuclear power. There are alternative ways of producing nuclear energy that doesn’t produce that much waste if any

 

[Malum Argenteum]

90g mixed reef, 40g sump, T5/LED hybrid (about 150w total). Temp is ramped seasonally according to Apex seasonal table (something like 75.5F winter and 81-ish summer) to reduce load on home heating and cooling.

My EB8s average 1.85 amps, so that's 222 watts average draw. Over a month (720 hours), that's 160 kWh. My power is ~ $0.12/kWh, so that's about $20 per month to run the reef.

I have an Efergy Elite 4.0 Wireless Electricity Monitor (this exact model is no longer made) to meter power on my reptile room for business tax purposes. Simple to install in the breaker box, and gives both real time usage and an ongoing log that can read in kWh or dollars. Useful tool.

 

[Reef keeper 103]

Because to date there is no fusion reactor known that produces more energy than it consumes. Solve that, and own the world. So if you want nuclear, fission it is.

We have working fusion reactors they’re called hydrogen bombs they do produce more energy than they consume, but that energy isn’t really in a usable form. Also, there’s a lot of working done and a company claiming that they produced more energy than they put in.

 

[Danny McElroy]

hello reefers!!

My electricity bill has been a lot higher lately. I live in California with 30 cent per kWh!

I added an energy monitor the other day and it cost me $1.5 per day to run my tank! I imagine it would be $2 per day in the winter. It’s only a 90G tank with 3 XR15s and no skimmer.

My electric bill used to be $100-$150 before my tank and now it’s $220-$350 with only 2 adults and 1 toddler in a newly built home.

What’s your guys electricity bill with the tank??

Mine costs $85 per day and our price per kWh in Texas is .1415 cents... I see why so many people are moving from California to Texas, your energy price is more than double ours...

 

[Dom]

hello reefers!!

My electricity bill has been a lot higher lately. I live in California with 30 cent per kWh!

I added an energy monitor the other day and it cost me $1.5 per day to run my tank! I imagine it would be $2 per day in the winter. It’s only a 90G tank with 3 XR15s and no skimmer.

My electric bill used to be $100-$150 before my tank and now it’s $220-$350 with only 2 adults and 1 toddler in a newly built home.

What’s your guys electricity bill with the tank??

Welcome to the hobby.

In the summer months, with central AC running, my electric bill runs between $475.00 - $500.00, monthly.

 

[BeanAnimal]

We have working fusion reactors they’re called hydrogen bombs they do produce more energy than they consume, but that energy isn’t really in a usable form. Also, there’s a lot of working done and a company claiming that they produced more energy than they put in.

Sure - if we are being pedantic we have working fusion reactors in that sense. But you said "why don't we just use fission"... I answered the question

As for more energy out than in for a controlled reaction? There has been no shortage of claims for decades, they all fizzle even if the material is fissile... (okay it wasn't as funny as it was in my brain)

Maybe one day.

 

[zheka757]

$450 winter time, 600$ summer time, in Florida. I average 3500kw per month here, 20% of that is from the tank.

 

[Dierks]

I dont want to talk about it... I don't think my wife does either

 

[Uncle99]

hello reefers!!

My electricity bill has been a lot higher lately. I live in California with 30 cent per kWh!

I added an energy monitor the other day and it cost me $1.5 per day to run my tank! I imagine it would be $2 per day in the winter. It’s only a 90G tank with 3 XR15s and no skimmer.

My electric bill used to be $100-$150 before my tank and now it’s $220-$350 with only 2 adults and 1 toddler in a newly built home.

What’s your guys electricity bill with the tank??

Additional $150 in Canada for $250 gallons
Ain’t cheap but worth it
US electric seems way higher than ours.

 

[BeanAnimal]

Doesn’t take eight hours, 30 minutes on a fast charger, we can just use nuclear power. There are alternative ways of producing nuclear energy that doesn’t produce that much waste if any

You missed the point (all of them) but that is okay.

We can "what-if" all day but the current reality is that we have grossly mandated reduction of generation and at the same time grossly mandated increase of consumption.

As for nuclear
1 - the average age of our plants is 42 years old. They are slated for 40 year approval. 20 years has been added to some, but NRC has indicated that no more time will be added beyond that. It maybe shouldn't be for safety.
2 - There has been 1plant built since 2016, it took 18 years from approval to startup, with 11 years of construction. Target construction time was 9 years.
3 - There are no new nuclear plants approved, funded, or being built. 13 Have been proposed, each has been stoped dead in its tracks by environmentalists, red-tape and an overall rejection of the idea. The best guess is that any completion of any of these plants would be 15-20 years down the road if approved today.

The day is quickly coming where the nuclear generation capacity of our nation will be a fraction of what it is today and it will take decades to rebuild, if anybody actually decides to allow it.

Reality is what it is...

 

[BeanAnimal]

I dont want to talk about it... I don't think my wife does either

She wants to talk about it every month...

I would pay the power company $100 a month if they agreed to reduce it on paper by $50 a month. Perception is everything

 

[Wasabiroot]

That is positive pie in the sky thinking. Reality is not even close.
1 - we are losing generating capacity at a rapid pace, not gaining it.
2 - the development and operating cost of the "alternatives" is exponentially prohibitive.
3 - alternative energy sources are weather dependent... all of them.
4 - output capability of alternative energy sources is small compared to conventional
5 - the laws passed and going into effect over the next 10 years will exponentially load the power grid. Cars, grills, furnaces,. stoves, ovens, lawnmowers, and everything with a combustion engine on it or that burns fuel.

Add those simple things up and the absurdity of the situation presents itself. The problem is that the vast majority people do not understand the scale of the issue, including those pushing these ideas and agendas. It is mass ignorance being driven by happy talking points, a few of which you have presented.

This is not a technology problem, it is a problem of both scale and the limitations of physics.

But I digress -- it takes about 3 minutes to fuel an average car that will run roughly 400 miles on that fuel. If it takes the average person 4 hours to charge their car and the average electric car gets 200 miles on that charge, that is 8 hours vs 3 minutes of downtime.

How much productivity in this country will be lost when everybody is forced to go electric... or even 1/3 of the cars are electric?

Given the above ~120 million cars on the road per day (skipping commercial trucking and transportation) in the US alone;. Charging even a fraction of those cars daily with low current for 12-72 or more each is one thing and the demand is significant. This will bring the nation to a near standstill compared to today. Rapid charging doesn't solve it but makes it better, right? The problem becomes almost unsolvable when high current charging (40 mins to say 4 or so hours) on superchargers is needed. Delivering that much power density to that many people for that many chargers is a monumental task to which the scope and cost is unfathomable, even if generation could keep up.

You mentioned investment and paying for this? The costs are astronomical. Who pays for it? This thread is about the absurdity of the cost to run a fish tank in CA and other states now and it is only the tip of the iceberg. If the private sector "invests" then costs explode. If government "invests" then taxes explode. Nothing is free. Again, CAs energy prices, cost of living and tax rates right now are a direct result of the policies and actions to move mandate alternative energy and mandate sunsetting of anything combustion... and they just got started.


Solar still sucks at any scale worth talking about, both in power density and longevity. It has hovered around 17% average for decades and premium panels may net you a bit more. But it they only work when the Sun is out. Storage of that power in batteries is both costly and inefficient (10% to20% loss depending on the system) due to transformation losses in both directions. But ignore that... Care to take a stab at the area of coverage needed to power a small town, let alone a city? One where the cars, ovens, heat, lawnmowers, and everything else are electric? Solar is nice on your house if the sun is out and the government helped pay for the panels... that is about it.


In the kindest way... it is not that we disagree, I simply don't think you have a full grasp of the scale of any of this. Most people don't.

We have not touched on the "real" environmental impact of any of these either. The WHY are we doing this question begs itself when the broader picture is looked at from an environment scope, let a alone a financial or national (for any nation) sovereignty scope.

Feel free to DM me and we can have a kind conversation off thread - that goes for anybody. It is not going to get solved here for sure.

Agree to disagree

 

[MnFish1]

$0 - runs from Solar 95% of the time

Curious - what did your solar cost - it was outrageous here.

 

[MnFish1]

about 450-500/month electric. Water bill much higher. The tank(s) - 3 - are about 150/mo

 

[MnFish1]

Wait until the classify your aquarium as a luxury item and require it to be on as smart metered socket so that they can bill you peak and/or turn it off when your neighbor wants to charge their electric car or run their electric stove... because the grid is overloaded. Coming to a town near you soon

Actually - this came up the other day - should people with pools be in that 'luxury level', or people with gas fire-pits, gas pool heaters, should air temperature be regulatable by the utility company, etc etc.

 

[Ziggy17]

When I look at my hydro bills, I’d say my tank averages up about $24 per month

 

[MnFish1]

It’s an added expense not all can afford. I know many people with ev and no solar. And I know many people with solar and no ev.

Nationwide, the average is around 25% overall that have both.

In busier / more modernized infrastructure states like California, it’s around 35-40%

Edit: wanted to add in, and acknowledge, statistically, these numbers and percentages are increasing consistently a few points year after year, and the increased reliability and affordability of ev cars, directly is impacting the installation and sales of home solar panels.

There is a huge difference in climate in the US - which is why I believe its hard to compare Australia or California to lets say Wisconsin. I personally don't care what someone drives - but in the midwest - the daily news is something along the lines of 'electric vehicles are rapidly losing popularity and hybrids are gaining. I personally don't care either way.

 

[Lbrdsoxfan]

This is one of the Southern California Edison rate plan (Time of Use).

That's why TOU is a farce. I didn't buy into that one for sure, I just pay the standard rate plan and you DON'T have to go TOU either, So. Cal Edison fails to mention that tidbit until you read the fine print.

 

[t5Nitro]

My electric bill is awesome with 400 watt halides. Potentially looking to tack on 375 watts of LED. How fun.