Basically, Carter wasn't deploying some cutting edge and extravagantly expensive (at the time) technology that could be deployed as a high-profile technical demo but not actually economical to use, he was deploying a cheap, practical technology that could be used on most houses, during warm months at least.
something really did a number on society and it politicized so many things that needn’t be politicized
But he talks about politics from back in the day. Everything has always been super politicized. Everything. But our memories are short as a country.
https://cdkn.org/resource/cdkn-inside-story-seizing-the-suns...
Wires are easier than pipes, we still need electricity, make the existing system larger rather than split between the two. Heat water during the midday when output is high. I use almost no hot water, so the system would have a long payback period. But I can heat water in a 15A kettle.
I love solar thermal, Trombe Walls should be integrated into the construction directly or added after the fact. They are for building heat, not water.
However that ignores the externalities of PV and heat pumps manufacture, replacement and disposal so I think the argument is BS.
Solar thermal is an aimed aluminum trough and a stainless steel pipe painted black on its focal point.
Few wanted one.
And still they're rarely installed. I knew more people in the 90s who were ripping them out or leaving them dry (they were popular for pool heating in some areas) than installing them.
Crazy. You see all these wind turbines all across the U.S. If not spread across the plains or along foothills, they're being shipped along the highways one blade at a time. I look at the transformation going on and figure we could have had this tech in the 80's. What happened in the last four decades? Talk about a lost generation.
It was so weird to grow up in the 70's when they were teaching us the Metric System in public schools, when National Parks were adding meters, kilometers to signage. Reusable spacecraft, renewable energy, (and nuclear energy), computers, micro-electronics....
To be sure there were warnings of an ominous, overcrowded, polluted future ("Soylent Green", "Silent Running", just to call out a couple films of the era) but as a kid I was infused with the optimism of the time. Buckminster Fuller, NASA ... even the hippies and their communes.
I think I still live in that world in my head. I hope maybe I have expressed a part of that optimism to my kids as I raised them.
When phrased this way it sounds pretty darn easy of a choice, but reality never phrases it that way and that person had money to bribe politicians.
And so we struggle. Because those with wealth do not want to give up their wealth.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1977/06/30/metr...
Neoliberalism and the Chicago school of economics happened.
You have been good to them, then. Those hopes were grown by a generation of survivors, thinkers, and humanists who expressed humanist principles in their work. They were agents of change. Knowledge, compassion, and fairness have been almost completely replaced in public discourse by cruel raving and demagoguery.
The reason they haven't picked up in the US is because infrastructure is good - electricity delivery is reliable. It's much cheaper to install an electrical or gas water heater rather than the complicated plumbing needed to add solar-thermal.
Here in the Netherlands government is now trying to ramp down PV subsidies, because PV has been so wildly successful that electricity spot prices are actually negative at peak sun (midday). (Even without subsidies I believe the panels are now cheap enough to be worth the investment, though.)
Which means people should start buying batteries. Pull in power during midday at a profit, and then send it back out in the evening at a profit. I'm curious how long it'd take to pay back the price of a battery.
Could change as tech improves but as of today they are pointless for most people.
This is misinformation.
I searched on google, bing and Yandex and all the results I found implied that breakeven would occur substantially before 20 years. The lowest breakeven time figure I found quoted was 5 years. The usual quoted breakeven ranges were, I'd say, 6-12.
