[00:00:00] Foreign. [00:00:05] You're listening to casual talk radio where common sense is still the norm whether you're a new or long time listener. We appreciate you joining us today. Visit [email protected] and now here's your host, Ler. A very happy weekend. I'm recording on the weekend for you. It may not be the weekend, but casual talk radio, A Gentleman's World is doing another upload. It's been a while. [00:00:32] The reason for it being a while, there is a compelling reason behind it and it has to do with a lot of things happening in the background that need to kind of get sorted out and it's going to cause me to have shift schedule ever slightly. I haven't decided what that shift is going to look like yet. I've got to put some thought into it. [00:00:54] Once I have a better handle on what that will be, you will be the first to know. [00:00:59] Today I've got two primary topics. I debated whether they should be separate and decided perhaps I should combine them. [00:01:10] One of the topics does not require excessive conversation though, so perhaps it made better sense to have that be kind of a slimmer episode. [00:01:20] The other one is going to be a little bit more in depth. [00:01:24] For now I'm going to focus on the in depth one because it's fresh on mine, number one. Number two, a lot of people are struggling with it and the primary motivation behind it has passed. And I think that creates another relevant topic because it'll help you understand the way that our government steers people to do things and why you have to be smart about timing and ROI and your, your situation. So the topic I chose, it does not have a single name because why you do it changes the technology that's relevant to it. [00:02:09] When we talk about self sustaining households, what do we really mean? How do you define a self sustaining household? We have to unpack a little bit and start hitting some terms and I'll do the best I can to keep it simple. I'll do the best I can to keep it succinct. Look it up. [00:02:29] But a self sustaining household at its core, from my lens is the idea that your household is, is, or can be independent from grid power at a basic level. If we use that definition, if we agree that that's a viable definition, we then have to say independent. [00:02:53] If you're using wind power, if you're using solar power, are you truly independent from the grid? [00:03:00] Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what region you're in. Some regions simply don't have the ability to leverage solar to A heavy degree, like other regions. Florida for example, Arizona for example, I would argue New Mexico to some degree. [00:03:18] Texas, certainly some areas can leverage significant amounts of solar. [00:03:25] New Mexico was one I can think of, Oregon's one I can think of. [00:03:29] And some places in the Midwest I can think of that can leverage wind to a good degree. [00:03:36] So you can use these so called renewable sources of energy if you have enough of it. [00:03:43] Now that balances against demand. Demand is how much energy does your home need in order to support whatever lifestyle and whatever appliances. [00:03:57] So everybody's definition of independent is going to be different. Some people need more energy than others. The average US household is roughly around 30 kilowatt hours a day. [00:04:10] Average. Average is an important word to throw in there. Some people are significantly higher than that. Some people are significantly lower than that. Some people are roughly around the middle. The vast majority are going to be on the upper part of that number. [00:04:26] Once you understand how much energy your household needs, that's first you have to test that there are tools out there that let you understand how much energy is necessary at any given point. Once you understand all of that, you can then create a strategy for how you're going to deal with it. You either rely on the grid. [00:04:44] Obviously there's primarily two parts of the grid. [00:04:48] There's electric and there's gas. [00:04:51] Not every home is piped for natural gas, especially on like the west Southwest. [00:04:57] They may not be piped for gas, others are piped for gas and they could use gas as an alternate form of fuel. [00:05:04] You may or may not know this if you live in a place that is not piped for gas. But natural gas is almost always less expensive than electric. However, natural gas is, the security of it is much lower, generally speaking than electric. Not totally, obviously. Somebody can be shocked, killed, heart stopped. There's all sorts of things with electric. But there are strong regulations around. [00:05:34] You know, you need to hire electrician to manage the panel and these things to help protect the homeowner. Still doesn't stop the risk. [00:05:41] And you know, you remember the old stories about stopping kids from touching the outlets and things. So the old days, gas pipes are sealed. They're sealed all the way to the appliances. You have less of a chance of a kid, let's say inadvertently inhaling the gas if it's properly installed. However, if you have a gas stove, you are burning gas right on that stove. You are releasing chemicals into the air. You have to use ventilation techniques. [00:06:08] So just by nature of using it, it's combustion. [00:06:12] That means potential for explosion. That means Potential, potential for leaks. There's all sorts of things that may go undetected, which is why they put regs to force things like smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors, etc. To try to get ahead of it and warn you before something gets bad. But we see on the news at times where a house just completely explodes out of thin air. [00:06:36] Often when you see that it's because of a runaway gas leak somewhere and then there's an open flame that's done in the house that might be as simple as a fireplace. It could be something where they had a gas stove or could be a meth lab that you didn't know about. [00:06:54] It's rare, but it does happen. [00:06:57] As a result of the risk of that. As a result of the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning and other risks. [00:07:04] Some newer homes are not being built by default with a gas line piped into them. [00:07:11] The trend where the home was by default piped with gas, wired with coax for cable, wired with regular pots. It's referred to for phone lines that they were pre wired for these things is gone. And now you have very minimal things that the newer homes are pre wired for. [00:07:32] You can request some of those. You can still request a regular phone line. Believe it or not. If you don't have gas you can request that be set up. [00:07:40] But the default is to not do these things. And instead there was a push to go electric. [00:07:47] Part of that push for electric is the what was referred to as the Green New Deal AKA Green New Scam. Why was it referred to as a Green New Scam? This is the crux of my story. I had to give the preface for eight minutes to just describe what's on going going on that leads into the self sustaining home and some of the technology things that people don't understand. [00:08:11] And it's. I don't want to say too late, but it's after the fact of the strongest benefit of it. [00:08:17] At some point in the past we started hearing more about this concept of solar energy. Credits were introduced in the bills for tax where you could take a credit for these green technologies, especially solar, but also things like hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles. The tax credit is an incentive. It's designed to steer consumer behaviors and encourage you to jump on these. The auto manufacturers get what's effectively a kickback for getting more people on to those technologies. That was the large driver behind the rush to EVs and away from fuel based vehicles. [00:09:01] Once the tax credits come around, the auto dealers sell you on the idea that well the sticker price is 40 something thousand dollars, but you get a $5,000 credit off of it. So it's really not 40 something thousand dollars. [00:09:16] The bottom line is that the price of the car is actually lower than that, but they're padding profit. [00:09:23] Profit from you as well as profit from the government subsidies. [00:09:28] The manufacturers and the dealers all saw strong profit opportunities for a rush to EVs when from an evolution perspective, we should always have gone to hybrids. Even now, I would argue roughly 80% of the cars on the road should be a hybrid vehicle, not an evil and not a fuel based vehicle. There's no reason in my mind to have a straight line fuel based vehicle anymore. [00:09:54] So I'm not one of those that says oil is the best. I'm saying that hybrid is the best. From an evolution, a logical evolution, a practical evolution, a sensible evolution. [00:10:06] Every, roughly 80%, not every, because it takes time, but roughly 80% of cars on the road should be hybrid vehicles. And we should not be in this SUV rush. We should still have the tiny cars that you can buy for 10,000 bucks for a kid graduating high school. We should still have midsize sedans. We should still have reasonably larger sedans, but they largely should be hybrids, not EVs. You can still have one EV PER. So Ford would have an EV. Honda has an EV. Just one. [00:10:39] Not EVs is the great majority. SUV's is the great majority. Such that you have to go physically to the lot and go around the back to see a slim population of sedans. That's not what we should be doing. [00:10:54] But this rush to incentivizing green energy spurred a lot of these, these auto manufacturers to go rush all the way into evs. Solar was designed to offset part of what they were doing to support this auto push. Because remember, some dealers were even saying, you get this free quote, plug in charger for your home, whether that's a portable one like I have with my hybrid plug in, or it's an actual installed one. It wasn't free. It was subsidized. Part subsidized, part packed into the price of the car. It wasn't free. There's no such thing as free. Somehow it had to be paid for because it's manufactured and it's done on pennies on the dollar, but they baked it into the price to maximize profit and maximize the subsidy. [00:11:45] All this while the push, if they were going to do that, should have been to make sure every single gas station across the country, including the ones in the remote nowhere, had at least One EV charger which with regulations that it be maintained just like a gas pump and always functional and always available, they didn't do that. [00:12:05] So the vast majority of the country you drive and you can't hit an electric charge station. Well, if you're in an ev, you're basically screwed unless you can get to some hotel that just happened to have one. I remember when I drove from Oregon down to Nevada, there's an entire stretch where you are not going to find an EV charging. Now my car, it's a hybrid, although it can plug in, it's a hybrid, it can still take fuel, it can still work on gas. And so for me, I don't care. There is no so called range anxiety for somebody that went full EV and people's counter would be, well, how often are you doing those drives? It doesn't matter how often. It matters the fact that you're at some point likely going to need to do it, especially if you move. And most people need to move to get to where jobs ended up migrating. Because as we saw like with Tesla trying to move California out, go to Texas, some of these companies are migrating to different states or it just happens to be that there's more opportunity in different states. Go west, young man. We remember the term solar. Then starts getting traction because they're telling you, well if you plug your car in, it's a strain on the grid, which it is and was. [00:13:19] But if you have solar, you can offset that expense and just use quote free sun to help charge your vehicle and then it's not a problem because you're using solar. Solar panels were egregiously expensive. Still are egregiously expensive. The tax credits were designed to help offset that. They are still egregiously expensive, not because they're expensive to manufacture, but because they're limited manufacturing, many people didn't get them. You have to wait for the super wealthy to buy in to create critical mass to bring down the price because of mass manufacturing. Same thing that happened with plasma TVs. [00:13:58] Solar still hasn't really gotten to that point. If we're honest. The types of solar panels that you see on roofs should really cost no more than $5,000 for a full array on the roof that can power a minimum stress minimum of 30 kilowatts a day should be about 5000 bucks to get in. I'm talking installed, I'm not even talking just the parts. We're never going to get to that point, especially now. I'll come back to it. [00:14:25] Solar. There's A couple of parts to this, the tax credits. [00:14:30] Trump passes the one big beautiful bill which expires green energy credits. It expired them December and December for residential customers. [00:14:39] It kept it active for business customers for I believe it's another year or two, but it expired it for residential customers. You now have lost the primary incentive for buying into green energy, such as EVs and solar, such that the auto manufacturers all of a sudden say, huh, we should go back to sedans now because they've lost that nest egg, they've lost the gravy train. That was the tax money. You were not enriched by a rush to EVs. It just took your taxpayer money and enriched those auto manufacturers at your expense because you were paying for that. There was no real ad value whatsoever. It was sold under the narrative of climate. But it wasn't about climate. It was about money, pure and simple. It always has been. [00:15:27] Why is that relevant now? [00:15:29] There are people that now see a benefit in having some sort of backup solution. This is where the self sustaining comes in and they're trying to understand what's the best blend. It's already too late to benefit from a tax credit perspective. Now we can get away from the bias of the tax credit being that carrot dangling and really focus on what you need. There are people who are struggling through power outages due to hurricanes, due to inclement weather, due to, due to insects, whatever it is, and they're trying to make sure that their critical appliances maintain during these outage situations. And so they don't know where to get started. Because the government never really focused on it, never spoke to it, the dealers never spoke to it, never focused on it. You were sold potentially on leasing solar panels, not understanding that insurance companies might balk at it, or even worse, the lease is not transferable or, or you simply can't pay it because you got laid off. That's another risk. Damaged credit, etc. [00:16:32] I thought then, now that there's no tax credit bias jading your thoughts and where you can focus on the problem that we're trying to solve, which is a self sustaining home, even if partially so. I can help share with you some of the components that go into trying to get to that point. You first have to understand the real problem you're trying to solve. [00:16:56] Some of that might be cost savings. I would, I would try to steer you away from that as a focus, but that might be your primary motivation. [00:17:06] If it's your primary motivation, the bottom line is no matter what you do, you're not going to Realize any return on investment, otherwise known as ROI, for at least 10 years, no matter what you do. If cost is the motivator, I would steer away from it. [00:17:23] Believe it or not, as expensive as your electric bill is, it's cheaper over the next 10, 15 years than it would be to buy these renewable energy sources. The only exception, the only exception is where you're generating so much solar that you basically do not have a monthly bill. I would argue 10 out of 12 months of the year. There are places that are like that, but they're the extreme outlier. The roof angling, or at least the positioning such that you can place any sort of solar to absorb. The vast majority of that solar has to be perfect. Your storage technology has to be stacked good. Your upfront investment is going to be significant to get to that nirvana. I'm not suggesting it's impossible. I'm saying that it's highly improbable. And I don't argue it's worth it if that's all you care about. But I would counter with a different thought process. [00:18:19] There are people who are not necessarily concerned about roi. They're more concerned about mitigation. Mitigation of the risk. You lose your job and you cannot pay monthly. [00:18:30] It's not that you're concerned about. At some point, I'm trying to recoup this money you're investing such that if there was something that happened, you lost your job, you got disabled, whatever, or you're a dual income, you lost one of them and you got these down points that you're trying to offset how much your monthly expenses are and you're willing to front load investment to get your monthly down, which is a smart investment strategy. If you're that continue to listen. [00:18:59] When you set up any kind of renewable energy, there's two ways to approach it. [00:19:06] Follow the terminology, but I'm not going to dig deep. You can go and research it deeper if you want to, and I encourage you to. [00:19:13] The first is grid tied. [00:19:15] The second is what's called battery storage. [00:19:19] Grid tied is exactly what it sounds like. Whatever technology, it doesn't matter. If it's wind, solar doesn't matter. Whatever technology works. Lockstep with the grid. [00:19:29] When I say lockstep, I'm saying that you collect whatever energy. [00:19:34] In many places you could set up an agreement with your utility company to sell back energy to the grid. They give you credits to offset your monthly bill. [00:19:45] So there's that. [00:19:47] The battery storage. [00:19:49] Ultimately the solar is going to the batteries. The batteries are then used either in addition to or in lieu of the grid. [00:19:59] Now, if you're trying to do what I said earlier, which is offset the monthly cost, you have to consider what's called time of use. Time of use is understanding when during a 24 hour period are you using the most energy. [00:20:15] Most people understand that time frame. It's going to largely be when people are home. Right. [00:20:21] If you're not home, what do you have running that nobody's benefiting from and should you be running those appliances? If you have an air conditioner in the summer and you run it while you're at work from 7am to 6 or to 4pm and you're running your air conditioner the whole time and nobody's home because your kids are at school and your spouse is at work too, you might be doing that to keep the house comfortable, but the fact is nobody's benefiting from from it for that full period. [00:20:53] A simple tweak of just telling the air conditioner, hey, turn off roughly an hour before we leave, turn on roughly two hours before we all come back. [00:21:03] Right there. That's conservation using time of use. You're saying for this period, we know nobody's home. I don't need it to run full stop the whole time. I just need it to run for a slim period to get back, back comfortable before we come back. [00:21:20] This is where a smart thermostat can help you because you can schedule those time slots and just keep it consistent during the Monday through Friday days. I want you to turn off at this point before we leave and I want you to turn back on for two hours before we come back to, you know, get it back on. It's very similar to if you have a tankless water heater and you set up a recirculation pump. You can schedule it to basically just kind of keep the heat ready to go, but only at points when somebody's ready to use it so that you're not having like in a tank water heater where it's constantly having to keep the water hot for you so it's hot on demand. [00:21:57] These techniques are easy, low hanging fruit ways that you can keep the monthly bill down by being smart about when your most expensive appliances need to run. And you can use smart technologies to automate those on a recurrent basis. [00:22:12] That right there, anybody can do it. You can do it now if you have the smart thermostats. If you have a tankless water heater, you can set and forget. If you don't have those and you have the older Technologies. [00:22:25] This is where battery storage can kind of help. [00:22:28] If your utility company offers you a time of use plan, which means that it charges you for certain periods higher than other periods. [00:22:37] If you can ensure that the vast majority of consumption is happening from battery storage, you can accumulate and store up battery storage during times when it's cheap and then use only battery storage, or primarily battery storage during times that it's expensive. That's time of use. It's called peak shifting. You're shifting the load to times for using the battery so that the battery it's also cheap energy. And then you recharge it when it's cheap as needed. [00:23:11] Battery storage technology is expensive. [00:23:14] You have to capacity up. You have to understand how much you need. And you might get to a point where you use more energy because it's cheaper, but it's not egregiously expensive to up your capacity. Let's say you like I got a steam humidifier for respiratory reasons. The steam humidifier is expensive. It's more expensive than an air conditioner. But the health benefit makes it worth the while. It critically makes it worth the while, especially in the wintertime. So it was worth doing it. But I understood it was going to hit me every month if I did not do something about it. So I set up battery storage. The battery storage basically just says everything in the house, even right now, is using the battery during the day when it's most expensive. [00:24:01] It recharges itself overnight when it's cheap. So the battery cost is high up front to get it installed, get it set up, get the right capacity, which I built over time. It wasn't like a once off. You build it, you can increase it as you determine how much energy you really need. [00:24:21] Now, the other part of solar I talked about, grid type, is where you tie your solar to that same battery storage. [00:24:28] So now my grid can support when it's available, but I didn't want to have to use full grid. If solar is available now, it's limited out here. Maybe only get four or five hours of solar. It's still four or five hours. I wouldn't have had otherwise if I didn't do it. [00:24:44] So I set up a solar array out back. It's not on the roof, it didn't need to be. [00:24:50] And the solar is used to recharge the batteries constantly as sun is available. So the battery is still powering the home. [00:24:57] But the solar is helping to keep the battery topped up. Either it's going to recharge the battery if the solar inbound is Greater than the demand outbound or the battery offsets demand, meaning that the demand, let's say it's 3 kilowatts, which is if the steam humidifier is peak is roughly about right, 3 kilowatts. But my solar inbound is 2 kilowatts. That means I essentially am only using 1 kilowatt of battery for that duration that the steam humidifier is running. So I'm using it as a form of conserving the battery energy is the solar over top of it. The next level, which I want to get set up at some point would be wind. And adding wind is another source inbound that charges the battery to try to get over the 3 kilowatt threshold that I know the steam runs because the wind tends to be more of a thing than the solar would be. So when the solar dies down, the wind would still continue. It's probably not going to get to the 2 kilowatts of the solar, but every kilowatt helps because that's less energy I have to take from the grid, which keeps costs down. That's the conservation I refer to. [00:26:06] What I'm getting at is you can combine all of these different strategies together. [00:26:11] You can say, I'll do the battery store piece. Battery storage, solar into battery is significantly cheaper than a grid tied system by far and away. It's a little limiting in the flexibility, you know, getting credits and things. [00:26:26] But just to keep the monthly bill in check, I think there's no peer to it. [00:26:32] You can then combine wind over top of that. You can then combine conservation over top of that and smart scheduling of things. [00:26:40] Once you get underneath your true capacity, you find that, all right, my bill can be as low as I really want it to be. I can put it better under control. I just got to be smarter about when and why without any loss. I have no loss of comfort in my current setup, but my current setup has to do a lot for me. The steam humidifier must run. It basically must run all the time because again, it's respiratory health. But it only needs to run for the five months of winter. It doesn't run all the time. It only runs during winter because that's when the dryness hits. [00:27:12] Once summer hits, it's the air conditioner. The air conditioner is not quite as expensive as the steam humidifier, but it is somewhat. Dehumidifiers for the basement are a little bit expensive. Not crazy amounts. [00:27:24] Then backups for my. Not backups, but power. Sustained power above and beyond the core battery power to mitigate outages let's say that there's a heat related outage that happens. I gotta make sure that my computers and my Internet and things continue to work because it's part of my job. I need to have access to these things. So I have supplemental battery above and beyond. So the main is not tapped for the computers. Let's say the computers have their own battery. Those stay topped up. When the mains get topped up this way, let's say that my batteries downstairs get completely drained, which is rare, but let's say they get completely drained and then there's a power outage. I still have what's referred to as satellite battery power that can sustain if I, you know, kind of mitigate my usage for another day. So I've got, if I do have full batteries downstairs, I can go a couple days because I can cut off non critical appliances and then I've got my satellite units that I can go about another day if I really needed to. And of course my Internet has to sustain as well. So I've got multiple layers of power is what I'm getting at. Newer induction stoves are actually coming with battery power within them. 5kW is about the number for this reason, so that your stove can still work in the event of an outage. [00:28:43] So battery storage became one of these viable options. During the tail end of 2024, there was a strong push to get people to buy into battery storage and the flexibility of connecting solar to battery storage so that you don't have to go full grid tight system, you don't have to tear up your roof, you don't have to do any of that stuff. But you can still benefit from renewable energies. To get closer to a self sustaining home. [00:29:10] There is a significant upfront cost. It's just not as significant as the roof based alternative. [00:29:17] The roof based alternative can be paired with a battery system. But not everybody wants to mess up their roof. If you're going to replace the roof, then it doesn't make sense to do solar prior to replacing the roof. At some point I'm going to replace the roof. I don't know exactly when, but it's going to have to be soon. I'm going to replace the roof. So it didn't make sense even for me to do that because the roof, that's an expensive replacement. So you take that replace, then you talk rooftop solar. You might be in the six figures by the time you're all said and done. [00:29:48] You might not get that much value because again out here we don't get significant sun. [00:29:53] In summary, you can do a grid tied system, but it didn't make any sense, especially with the loss of the green energy credits. [00:30:03] Solar may make sense, but you understand that the investment for it really goes to how much sun you get. The more sun you have, the easier it is. But the hardware up front is the cost you need to account for. If you're thinking about roi, the ROI is not going to be realized for at least 10 years period. If you don't plan to stay in the house, you don't plan to stay in the region. It may not make sense to do something that is hard installed versus something that's modular, such as a battery based system. Because a battery based system, you can take it and go to your next place, set it up again and continue benefiting from it. So the thought process behind it that stored energy is a portable thing. It is something based on your capacity needs. [00:30:47] Then you can combine that with green energy technologies. You can combine that with conservation techniques and smart devices to create your close to self sustaining home. I don't think anybody can get to a full self sustaining home. [00:31:04] I say that some claim that they have. [00:31:07] Maybe they have. They might have combined hydro if they have water sources nearby in addition to solar, in addition to wind to try to get there. I just happen to know that we're dealing with very unpredictable weather conditions that make it much more difficult to get the full self sustaining. [00:31:24] But if we rethink the definition of self sustaining, it means you can get really darn close. [00:31:30] You just have to understand the upfront investment. [00:31:33] Battery based storage, you can build up to it over time. [00:31:36] You don't have to commit full. The other thing about self sustaining, it doesn't really go to sustaining. It really goes to emergency. Emergency backup. In the south, mostly in the south and in some parts of the Midwest, you'll hear the ideas of generators. Generators are a perfectly serviceable way to run when power is out. You might have regular fuel or propane or some other type of fuel that runs it. It's nothing more than an engine, standalone engine that generates electricity. You plug it into an inlet box usually or transfer switch. You manually go. You flip the switches during an outage. [00:32:14] It powers the home. This is a viable option. If that's all your. That's why I say you know how to understand your goal. If all you're trying to do is make sure things run, that might be perfectly fine and you can do that on the cheap. The inlet switch might only be a few hundred dollars to install for electrician Some electricians rip you off, but you get what I'm saying. [00:32:31] The generator, you can get one for less than a thousand dollars. Now, they're not that expensive. Propane. I have a propane tank out back. 30 pound propane tank was $20 to fill up, so it's not a lot of money. Propane is stable, so you can store it for a long time and just have it have four or five propane tanks. In the event that there are extended outages. The generator outlet method is going to be more sustainable as a strategy. You just have to realize that you're doing it as a contingency plan. That generator might not get used for two years before you hit an emergency. And then you got to use it. The generator has to be maintained. You should fire it up, run it for about an hour every now and then, keep it going, make sure the oil is in good spot. It's an engine, so you have to take care of it. Fuel stabilizers sometimes are recommended. [00:33:23] You have to have the propane tanks available or you have on site, like say a propane tank on site. If you have a larger property, you have to maintain it and take care of it. So the cost up front, front might be significantly lower. And this is true. But the cost in terms of time and level of effort and fuel, that's an oil. That's where you're going to realize some sort of an expense. It's not a significant. It's just something you have to budget for and plan for. But the generator is able to usually sustain for a reasonable period of time, especially if it supports natural gas and your home is piped for it. [00:33:57] If you have a large propane tank on site, same thing you could probably sustain for a couple of days. It's rare. Not that it's impossible, but it's rare that you have homes where they're just completely out for like weeks at a time. It does happen, but it's not common. And so many people don't invest in that infrastructure because it's just. There's not that many situations where there's extended outages like that. [00:34:22] So usually you could just do single propane tanks, maybe five of them, 30 pounds a piece, set them off the side. Get a single generator for 800 to 1000 bucks that supports propane and as needed, you pull it out, you start it. They have start technologies that you don't have to do the pull cable unless it's built in electronics or dead, which could happen. If it's extreme cold, you fire it up and then you just have to maintain it, run it every now and then to keep things fresh, keep the battery charged up. [00:34:53] That's a viable option if all you're trying to do is have backup power in the event of an emergency. [00:34:59] You can pair generators with battery technology. [00:35:03] So you can say that the batteries are recharged by the generator. The house is still ultimately powered by the batteries. People are like, well, why would you do that? What's the point of it? The primary purpose of doing that. [00:35:16] Generators have a certain output capacity that they support. And the cost of the generator goes up based on how much demand is imposed on the generator. So many people are not able to run expensive ovens or that sort of thing against the generator. They just can't. And so they have to go without it. [00:35:34] Battery technology does not have such a limit. Its inverter, so it's referred to, is sized based on what your demand needs to be and it's able to handle it better than a direct generator connection. [00:35:47] So if you get the right battery technology up front, most of the newer ones and the larger sized ones can easily run an entire house, including expensive appliances, if and when needed. Now, I'm not suggesting that you should run your 50amp oven during a power outage. You know, can you live with the microwave? Can you live with, you know, basic cooking things, Maybe your barbecue grill outside or something where you don't need to run the 50amp something because it's, to me, it's a waste. But some people, that's what they want to be able to do. Or their air conditioner, if it's sweltering hot, they want to run the air conditioner. Mine would be get some little portable air conditioners around the house, plug them into regular outlets and deal with those. Not the central one, because it goes to conservation, you're dealing with an outage, you don't need the super one, you're dealing with an outage. The battery technology basically says you don't have to compromise. You can run the expensive stuff, but the generator by itself normally is not able to do that unless you size it up. And that's again a significant expense, like a Generac type deal. So you can choose, I'm just going to size up, get superpowered generator. That way it's just whatever. If you're in an area that rarely has outages, that's just front money for the contingency where it may never be used or infrequently used and you accept that cost or you're doing it to improve the value of the home. But you understand that you're losing part of the property, right? Because it's gotta be installed and it's gotta have a slab. And some people might see that as a value, some people might see it as a negative. So when you go to sell the house, you have to tell the story. [00:37:24] You might not care. You might just say, I'm gonna be here till I am dead in the ground. And so it's what I want. And that's your justification is I'm doing it cause it's what I want, not because I care what somebody else thinks about doing it. [00:37:38] The flip, which is kind of where I am is while I'm doing it, because what I want, I also understand I don't want to put something that somebody doesn't ultimately see valuable. [00:37:48] So I have portable storage, my storage or solar rather. Well, storage and solar. But the solar is portable. It is along my rear fence. It is portable. I can take it down and I can take it with me. The entire array, the batteries are portable, modular. The panel, which is the smart tech that makes it all happen, it's not fully portable, but I can take it. I just have to call an electrician to do it. And then we recircuit things back to the way they were. If I really wanted to, my thought was, well, if I were to go to sell the house, I would ask, I would probably do it myself and I would ask the prospective buyer, let me explain what this is doing. And if you don't see value in it, I'll take it with me. But I think it's worth doing it. But understand it's going to increase the price, the price of the house when I go to sell it. I think there's value in it because it means you will not have what's called an outage. You'll have power when you need it. [00:38:44] You have a tankless water heater that basically is quote free except for the gas which is small. [00:38:50] You can run pretty much any plug in appliance for quote free. If you really want to, I would sell it. And then if they don't want it, I would take it with me. So that's was my thought is I don't think I'm going to be here. The long term physical situation might warrant that. I have to be. I don't know yet. But I would hope that no, I would not be here. And I could go where I really want to be. And I don't even know where that is yet. [00:39:14] I don't know yet. [00:39:16] But I would try to sell it as a positive. And that's another thought process people might have is do you want to keep all the tech? I want to keep all the tech because I think it's awesome tech. But I understand that the next homeowner might also want to keep it and I'm fine with them keeping it as long as they pay me for it. Right. And I'll just set it up again in the new place. [00:39:36] Summary all high level. [00:39:39] You can do grid tight solar. You don't have to. [00:39:42] There's less of a value in doing it now that we lost the green energy credits. You can do portable battery based solutions. You can pair either of the two with additional green energy technologies. [00:39:55] If you choose to get into it, understand that you're doing it because you're trying to, let's say, mitigate the monthly bill or have a fallback plan in the event of an outage. There are always less expensive solutions like a Generac type thing that are kind of plug and play, once and done. There's nothing wrong with those solutions at all. [00:40:14] I'm saying that there's other benefits to these batteries. Solar, wind, et cetera. Technologies that those solutions don't in themselves offer. Where these kind of offer the best of both worlds. The cost is kind of a wash if you add $1,000 generator to let's say a $10,000 battery setup. [00:40:35] So you say 12,000 bucks. [00:40:38] So do you spend $12,000 potential on a generac, I'm talking all told, install piping, you know, $12,000 on a Generac whose sole purpose in life is to keep the house running. Already spend the same 12,000 bucks, you still have a generator. But now you can also keep your monthly bill down. Things that you want to be thinking about even though without having to think about the tax credits. Because the tax credits now are not part of the conversation, so they are no longer a distraction.