Your Energy Bills Are About to Soar... Why Solar Is More Important than Ever!

hey guys how's it going welcome back to a special tuba DaVinci live stream so glad you could join us with your Sunday really appreciate all of you guys joining us all right so let's start with a little recap of kind of our week and what we've been up to our last video was on the toroidal prop design and how it's this cool new technology that could potentially save on a lot of money for the shipping industry and there's a lot of questions and comments around how it might impact aircraft and propellers drones all kinds of stuff that was really cool video you can check that out I will put a link to it or we'll try to second we were in Taiwan Juan and I were in Taiwan we covered this show called 2035 e-mobility Taiwan it was super cool we had a video go out on Wednesday about that kind of seeing some of the vendors and the suppliers that make all the products that we love possible right so we we see the end product but there's so many things that go in supply chain and Taiwan is an amazing country highly recommend you guys visit if you haven't and um and and check it out we got a chance to kind of check out the tsmc headquarters and stuff really really cool stuff all right so next week we have a video on zipline which Mark Rober had to episode on which that was the coolest thing and we kind of talked about how it might impact other things especially Transportation medical emergency that sort of thing secondly we have a really cool episode on a new battery a portable power station which will go out probably Tuesday so stay tuned for that also our solar system is finally up and running for those of you guys have joined in or know kind of our assist our situation we've been trying to go solar for a while but the big hiccup always was our roof we bought this house and moved in we knew we'd have to get a new roof and it was expensive right so I had to start saving up on top of making the mortgage payments and everything else got the new roof last year we got the solar panels up we have a 11 kilowatt system and uh by the way one that light is on right over my head so we got the 11 kilowatt system installed and now it's finally on and making us money and I'll tell you right now I've been waiting for this for a while we'll get back to this here in just a minute but sdg news been very frustrating for us our electric bill gas and electric bill combined is averaging a thousand dollars a month and in the three months in 2023 we have paid thirty four hundred dollars for three months of energy and that comes on the heels of huge natural gas price hikes just in time as California was seeing really cold weather which is not normal and people are running their heater more often they jacked up the rates and stuff it's a whole thing it's kind of the motivation for why I'm doing this and why I've always recommended we take energy Independence more seriously and we'll get back to that here in a second and this entire episode really is dedicated to that so we have we have our system I'll pull up some of the numbers really quick but last time I checked we have already produced 900 kilowatt hours of of solar power in not even a month just about three weeks or so so we should be right on track to make 1300 a month which is kind of nice and right where we want to be and also these are some pretty cloudy days so they haven't been perfect and I think on a really good day we'll be making closer to 60 and a bad cloudy day between 25 and 30 which is still decent and we could we can survive off that our goal is to be net zero right so now we have the span smart meter stay tuned for an episode on this band I freaking love it this is the app I I check it out constantly I think it's the coolest thing we have our solar next up is the battery and we'll cover all that on episodes if you're a new subscriber if you're a new viewer subscribe stay tuned we're going to cover a lot of this stuff but let's switch gears a little bit and talk about why going solar has just become something I I really I in the past I've always kind of said if you have the money if you have you know if you've saved up for it you're ready to do something like it do it but increasingly it's becoming something I think everybody should consider and it's not just a financial reason anymore or an environmental one like maybe you want to save the planet and be carbon neutral maybe you want to save money I think there's there's even more motivation now in case you live in California you know that it is now too late for net energy metering three or for two now we're in a new phase called nem3 so any systems that are now getting approved not installed but improved after April 13th sadly you're going to have the new plan where they're going to pay you way less money for excess production which kind of sucks but um there are things you can do first of all get batteries the key really will be if you produce energy store it yourself use it in the night until the sun comes back up again and if you can store enough energy to do that you'll be in good shape and we are planning on doing just that not yet but we are planning to so there's I in my in my opinion there's kind of four things happening around the world and just in general that are gonna make for really unpredictable uncomfortable energy pricing so if you've been looking at your energy bills and and kind of been shocked or alarmed at how freaking expensive energy has gotten I kind of have some bad news I think I'm putting on my prediction hat here I think things are going to get potentially even worse uh in the next coming years right first of all there's just the global geopolitical implications the war on Ukraine has has been has caused Energy prices to rise for quite a while and I think if you live in Europe for example any any commenters any of our viewers from Europe please let me know sound off we'll put them on screen but you've seen your bills already on the rise and I think what you've learned is just how dependent parts of Europe are on Russia for example for natural gas and while it never mattered before and you're paying a comfortable rate for natural gas suddenly sanctions are in place there's a war going on things change and all of a sudden your bills are wildly higher and you weren't prepared for it you didn't change anything you just lived your life and your bills changed so there's a geopolitical component that makes it difficult and unfortunately that's very unpredictable there's no way to know when that will happen maybe the next 10 years we'll enter an era of unimaginable prosperity and peace around the world I pray every day that's the case but we just don't know and My Philosophy especially for my family and my business as you guys know for me energy pricing and reliable power not having power outages is crucial because I run tuba DaVinci from this location we are in our office building this building is on my property it's the second little house and if we lose power the entire company is not operating our Network our servers go down we're not producing videos we're not editing and that's something we just cannot afford so for us energy is even more critical but as a lot of you guys are working from home you might be in the same boat as well so with geopolitical con you know considerations China and Taiwan there's a lot of turmoil or kind of instability I think so we hope for the best but I like the Marine Mantra of like prepare for the worst and hope for the best and um there's just no way to know exactly what will happen in the future the second thing is the effects of climate change and how they're playing out for example Alex ticker symbol you one of my really good friends is in Florida and Florida is flooding currently and it's not from a hurricane which you might think okay that's kind of a thing that happens it's just from record rainfall typically in April the state gets around 25 to 30 inches of rain for the month of April and they got 25 or 30 inches in like a day and as a result their drainage systems and stuff can't keep up and parts of Florida are just flooding now these things again are hard to predict there's no way to know if you're gonna have record rainfall or drought you can't really there might be some models that could get close but there's not really any way to know and so if you are and see if you can pull up some footage footage one if you can so there's no way to know if you're going to have that here in California we've had a similar thing where we have had record rainfall we've had four months of some of the coldest weather I've ever seen I truly do not remember in my 35 years in California it ever being this cold for this long especially in San Diego it's been a cold and wet winter the wet part is good I think our drought is over and as the the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada's will melt we should have a good long period of of um of weather but it has been very challenging and so there's just kind of new changes wildfires might not be a problem this year but they'll probably return here in California if it's not wildfires it's hurricanes a tornado a cold snap you know like what happened in Texas where you know really record cold weather the grid wasn't ready there were outages and stuff so there's there's that component that's the second component then there's the utilities and all the control and and what those companies can do we in California were not ready for record natural gas prices and in fact this year the natural gas prices were on the way down but we still had increasing rate charges and part of that is because these companies will buy energy ahead of time so like you'll buy a natural gas future for this price locked in for this period of time and if they bought it at a bad time and the prices are going down it's not going to benefit you and then when like record demand shows up because of cold weather that can compound and there's all sorts of challenges that can arise from that so between those kinds of considerations was there when I missed one was there a fourth thing I'm trying to remember between I mean those three things leave you kind of unsure about what the pricing is going to be also and this is a kind of a breaking story things are you know kind of In Motion but in California and San Diego in particular they're planning a new charging model where they're going to have a flat rate based on your income and this is a clear attack on people with solar panels the reason why this is frustrating is I told you a thousand dollars a month how many of you pay a thousand dollars a month in natural gas and electricity now if you're thinking oh Ricky's a crazy person who uses a ton of power not really we used about 1100 kilowatt hours a month and natural gas yeah we had the house heater running we have a natural gas furnace which we want to get rid of and now that we have solar we probably could but right now we have um pretty average uses I bet you a lot of you guys depending on where you live you use way more energy it's just that you're not paying ludicrous amounts of money for it and so if you if you're you know if you're thinking in California you have to kind of Go Solar right if you don't go solar you're going to have to pay these ridiculous prices and California has been expensive for a while and San Diego leads the way it is even more expensive than Northern California PG e their utility up there and it's just been frustrating so for a lot of people going solar is almost a necessity because my payoff period is going to be really short right you can imagine if I'm saving like 1200 bucks uh 1200 a thousand dollars a month-ish that's twelve thousand dollars a year my thirty thousand dollar store system we paid off in like three years right and there's mother based charges and stuff but let's say three to four years that's kind of a no-brainer because then for 27 or 28 30 years after that you're just it's just net profit you're making money producing solar all the way through but this new bill is kind of aimed to stop people with solar right because this new bill and based on my income level I would be paying here in San Diego 127 dollars just to be on the grid not based on usage just to be alive if I turned off my master breaker went on vacation for a month my electricity charges would be over 130 dollars a month for using no energy and solar production can't offset that right this is a bill that they're trying to pass which would take effect maybe next year so we have a little bit of time but there's no way around it even if you have solar if you have any any N2 or whatever you thought you had they can change the rules and this is the part that made me want to make this live stream because it's really infuriating what can you do you build your life you've done your things and suddenly they're talking about billing you differently now I am going to rail on sdg E but I'll wait for a second first their rationale is well all these people with solar panels are hurting poorer low income families and the logic is okay we have these really high rates people who have the money to go solar will go solar and now they're not paying it but as a result the the rate is high because you know the the poorer lower income family that can't afford solar is having to burden that cost and rather than making it easier for other people to go solar which is not in the utilities interest they're thinking how about this will lower the charge the rate of electricity for everybody and then introduces flat rate so as a result the the people without solar will pay less right because their bill just went down and their flat rate will be much smaller so if you're making thirty thousand dollars a year the base charge would be like 27 not terrible but still a ton of money in my opinion and then for people with solar even though you paid for this big solar system you're still going to pay whatever it is like fifteen hundred dollars a year just to be on the grid and I honestly think if that goes through in a year's time I am going to go off grid and this gets to the battery part right if you want to be truly energy independent the battery is the most important thing I would argue the battery is probably as important or even more important than solar because even if you had a power outage and you have batteries fully charged without solar you could probably last quite a while until the power came back of course the combination of solar and battery is is the cream of the crop in terms of what you can do so I I want to also understand that the technologies that I talk about or the things I want to do are super expensive and I completely understand if you've watched my videos you know how long I've been talking about this so you can imagine how long I've been saving to do some of these things for example going solar uh we'll start with my electric car my first electric car we bought in 2020. we've had it for three years my Tesla Model three I've been saving and preparing to buy that car for a long time before that our current house I've been saving my whole adult life to be able to buy this our dream house if you will right with two properties where I can run my business right from home near my kids and not miss a beat going solar it took me the entirety of last year to be able to save up enough money to get the new roof and Go Solar so my point is I'm not insensitive to the fact that these things are expensive but I think my motivation to make this video and we have links by the way to some of the energy sources like energy Sage is a new partner of ours that we want to work with ways to save ongoing solar if you've watched our videos we have this long-term sponsor called Hoy miles and our micro inverters are powered by Hoy miles and the really cool part about it is they're micro inverters but my 29 solar panels only needed 10 inverters and the reason why is because each Hoy Moss has a couple different products a one to one inverter one panel one inverter they have a two in one and a four in one and I have a bunch of the four in ones and if you get a four in one inverter you can save about half the price of a traditional micro inverter and in fact my inverters probably cost a little bit less than a traditional string inverter plus the optimizers anyways nerding out a little bit we'll get into this more in details but I save a ton of money on my inverters with Hoy miles so we have links to that energy stage is a really good resource there's um you can buy used solar panels right my goal in the coming years is to find ways to make all this stuff cheaper now if you can do DIY and install things yourself and do the perimeting yourself solar is not expensive at all honestly my 29 panels I bought used from a company called solar Steels which there's a link to in the description I paid five thousand dollars for 29 panels 410 watt each they're really awesome they're commercial grade panels and five grand right my my micro inverter is similarly priced half the price of traditional panels now I did pay for installers I don't have the time or energy or the roofing wherewithal or knowledge know how to do it myself but if you could do that yourself 11 kilowatt system for around 10 or 15 grand is probably reasonable with the racking and hardware and stuff that's kind of hard to beat now there's a ton of people who will teach you how to do the DIY solar route I'm probably not going to do that here on this channel but I will break down and I'll recommend you know and and try to provide as many options as possible so um we have some footage one throw some some some video of our of our solar and um so there's there's ways you can save but it is expensive and the way to think about this is to build toward a future where you're energy independent right it's not going to happen overnight it didn't happen overnight for me I'm almost 40 years old and I'm finally realizing a dream I had in college my dream has always been I want to have a house with well at the time I didn't really think the electric car was possible because Tesla in 2002 to 2006 when I graduated it was hard to imagine that electric car would be so easy I kind of thought I'd have to build my own or something else but you could just go buy one now and there's cheap options used Chevy bolt is very is it kind of the economic King but you can get an electric car solar panels and live entirely off grid and I will tell you that in the three weeks since I've had my entire system operational with my span meter I have been charging my car and living my life entirely on solar power now because I don't have the battery all that exporting to the grid is not really net zero right because somebody else has to use it but then I use other energy later it's not solar powered so I have a ways to go but the point is I have been charging my car for free so those Break Even calculators are even better if you don't need a natural gas if you don't need a internal combustion car so but of course buying Navy is not cheap I understand that but if you need to buy one eventually there's ways you can go about it so um oh I remember one more thing in the news that I've been hearing recently that I wanted to touch on that will change how energy is being billed and that is Germany recently announced that they are shutting down their final three remaining net uh nuclear power plants and this kind of falls into the geopolitical category but this is really important and the reason why is we're entering a transitional period and it's going to be painful transitions are usually painful right if you ever if you're a Windows user and then you turn to Mac for a while it'll be painful right there's new ways to learn how to do things in the case of the energy transition the reason why it'll be painful is because we're going to have to figure out what to do in the interim natural gas power plants have been around nuclear power plants have been around but the difference is nuclear power has become a weird it's still valuable there's a place for it but I don't I project that no one is going to build them anymore and the reason is the regulations are so strong and it is so difficult and expensive to build a nuclear power plant that your people aren't going to do it and that that didn't matter in the past when they were built a Commissioned Running nuclear power plant is really economic you just keep running it produce power but what's happening around the world is they're aging out if you look at Japan I'll just Japan France and Germany are some leading countries in terms of nuclear power Japan is actually turning some of their power plants back on their nuclear power plants but Germany's phasing them out and the reason is they're old a lot of the the Heyday the glory age was the 70s 80s when France and Japan for example were entirely nuclear powered and it was great but they're old now so now we're entering a point where it's kind of like the analogy I would use is if you have a car you have an old car kind of a beater you've had forever and it's been great for you it's paid off and it works but then there's that horrible moment when you have a catastrophic failure the engine blows up the transmission dies something like that you take to a mechanic and he tells you I'm so sorry but it'll cost five grand to replace and then you're forced to make a decision you can either pay five grand to get the engine rebuilt transmission all those things to get this car running again but you know that car is not even worth five grand so if I did that sure potentially it might work but also maybe next year the HVAC system goes out and then the bearings and the wheels and other components start to fail one after the other so then you would think why did I just spend five grand on this old car that's not even worth five grand and now I have another bill for a thousand right that's how countries feel about nuclear today the cracks and some of the you know the the encasement and and containment devices have a certain age right there's cracks start to form you have to do inspections ndis non-destructive investigations and some of these things need to start to be addressed but now when you do those changes you have to meet and comply with the regulations and laws of today and these laws are incredibly stringent because as you can imagine if nuclear power goes wrong it goes really wrong and you gotta try credit the engineers and the technicians and people who run nuclear power plants that we'd never hear about any of these kinds of problems even Fukushima no one really died from it I mean sure they have huge silos of radioactive water that they can't really just do anything with they have to just kind of hold them for thousands of years but no one directly died from some of those things so but there is an inherent danger in nuclear power and as a result the regulations make it very difficult so for a lot of countries around the world they're facing that analogy the broken car that's old and worth very little what do you do so Germany used to have these nuclear power plants and their energy prices and everything else was a function of that if they're phasing them down Germany is kind of a leader in terms of wind and and solar which is great but do they have enough battery storage for the night can they handle that it's hard to tell and what are they going to do they're going to go natural gas pick your power plant or like other base load systems and once they do that your bills again might fluctuate dramatically because as we transition there's going to be a day when batteries all the mega packs Tesla's working on other companies flow batteries we've done videos on some of this technology there's going to be a day when this is really easy but that day is not today today is going to be a transitional period And there's going to be kind of a a learning pain right and so that will affect your prices as well and there sometimes might not be any warning you know it's hard to predict you know Germany right now is decommissioning nuclear power plants and then 2024 summer there's a record Heat Wave and suddenly they're going to start rolling out brownouts potentially or raising the rate so high as to kind of force you not to run the air conditioning because you don't want to pay that bill there's going to be these kinds of realizations so in my mind for some of those factors now is the most important time ever to really consider going solar and I say consider going solar not like Go Solar today because again I've always been a believer that you have to plan and pay for this stuff financially responsibly I've always done that I don't take loans I don't really like debt I like to just save put a plan together start saving toward it when you have enough money saved go pull the trigger so maybe you don't buy solar for two more years or one year or six months it doesn't really matter but I want to put it on I want to put it in front of you to think about and for me it comes down to being prepared I want to be prepared if the power goes out let's say there's a like for example in California we had the really bad rain and there were mudslides and stuff so as a result there were areas that were without power for periods of time if you have a telephone pole that falls by the roadside due to a Mudslide from heavy rain you're not gonna have power and you might not have power for two days so in my mind it's almost like a savings account like you know they always try to stay for a rainy day ironic that that's the that's the expression but could you last two days without power right so maybe like the portable power stations I'm reviewing increasingly more portable power stations ecoflow renergy dapson's a new one I'm trying out these are great because they're really cost effective and you just leave them charged up the power goes out roll this out plug your fridge in keep your fridge running roll one out to your wireless modem and router and you can keep working off of a battery possibly and it's not so bad right right the UPS is no good should I mention that so like here's one for example from a company called ecoflow this battery we keep charged and ready to go if something were to go wrong now for us we're planning on being entirely power battery powered by the house but if you're not you could pick up a portable power station like this it has solar input so you can put some solar panels on a patio keep them charged that way too and potentially go two days not have spoiled food not be rushing to you know figure out what to do and actually live a decent little life for two days now the level of luxury gets harder and more expensive right you're not charging your car you're not running air conditioning off of small batteries you need a bigger system right my plans have a pretty big system we'll talk more about that later but you can start as small as that also the really cool thing about these portable power stations is they have solar input so even if you don't want to go solar and get the permitting and do it all formally if you have a patio or a little bit of a plot of land you could roll out solar panels and keep these things charged up and theoretically kind of an infinitely power certain things so start there that's cheap right for me I haven't I don't I mean there are commissions and things from some of these like energy stage platforms but I'm not worried about that I'm just trying to give you guys options for things you can do the portal power station is one of the fastest growing segments the amount of companies that reach out to me to to to mess around with their new portable power station is incredible I get emails almost every day and I'm I'm happy to hear it because I think people are starting to realize you know whether I'm going camping going outside going to a park or being prepared for emergencies a portable power station is an amazing thing um and of course I personally think the long-term bigger strategy would be a permitted on roof you know solar system but those are expensive but think about going solar now because if you do you'll be prepared for for that eventuality and you know I I hope that the power outages and things are not so bad but again think of today as a transitional period if you're you know more people are getting electric vehicles your DC fast charging pulling 250 kilowatts from the from the grid and as that rolls out more are we keeping Pace it's kind of it's hard to to build supply and demand perfectly that's not normal typically it's kind of make the iPhone and you can't make them fast enough because the demand is this High and the supply is that high right and then eventually you ramp up the supply and the demand Falls and you have too many or it's hard to make them line up is the bottom line so the best way to be protected and safe with your family is to have a backup plan I think now going solar and getting a home battery it used to be a luxury or a way that people who had high energy bills could could kind of combat that and save money but increasingly with all that's happening around the world I think going solar and having a battery for your home is kind of self-reliance and assurance and emergency preparedness and and knowing that you could continue to run your family and your life even if the power goes out now all these factors are compounded if like the weather is really cold and you don't have a way to heat your house even a little little space heater in one room if your whole family just crowded into the master bedroom and you had a space heater running on a thousand Watts or something to keep your family warm that goes a long way right and with you know whether or how about like medical issues if you if you need some sort of a medical device for your personal health could you go two days without having power probably not but incredibly some of these little battery and solar options can can make that a reality so there's probably eight things I covered that I want to cover in depth in like in-depth videos in the future but what I really wanted to kind of to talk about is uh this feeling that I have where I'm increasingly unhappy with my utility company and but they're a monopoly here in California I can't really I can't really change it now there are some Community energy plans and stuff you have a quote you have a comment one we have a comment let's see if I can see if I can read that I can't really read that in this view can you turn off Studio mode so I can see it full screen there we are all right so read one boy says Ricky explain this new free based oh this new fee based on income this is for everyone not just new solar users excellent question so people say when sogo's California civil if the U.S eventually follow when it comes to emissions and car models everyone makes cars out of California compliant because if you make a California compliant it'll be all 50 state compliant this is an example of how California leads the way the wrong way so great question this fee affects everybody so the plan currently would be Edison which is in like Southern California sdg e here specifically in San Diego and PG e in Northern California are all teaming up it's kind of the evil Galactic Empire if you will they're all teaming up to build this new flat fee based on income and these companies they're they're flirting they're doing this to help low-income families they're they're they're the good guys in the story right and what they're saying is yeah in your bill think of it as two parts one will be usage based and one is income based so they have different tiers um you know and if you make let's be honest if you have a home in California you're making thinking you're going to be on the top end of this tier right homes where I live on average are 1.3 to 1.8 million dollars there's no way you're buying a house like that if you don't make enough money to hit that limit and they know what they're doing they've made these caps you know where most people will fall into that big bucket but yeah your bill will be two parts one will be usage based so now your electric electricity builds a little bit smaller per kilowatt hour but then you have this flat rate and there's nothing you can do to get around it you can't offset it by oh I exported so much solar that no the that does not complete they're two different parts they're two buckets and there's no way you can get around it and like I mentioned to put into context sdg e is the worst of all of them and for them the lowest tier would be like 27 so if you're lower income or the lowest income your flat rate would be you'd have a plus 27 charge but the odds are that your usage charge would lower more than 27 and so if you were the lowest income Californians you would save on energy your Net bill would be smaller right let's say you had a hundred and eighty dollar bill now it would be let's say it was 90 plus the 27 it's 120. so you're saving 60 bucks um but the the motivation you can tell by how they structured this deal the motivation is simply we got to screw the people that are screwing Us by going solar and not using our energy right because there's no way to get around it um typically I'd always say okay well any M3 which is kind of plans to do the same thing is not isn't that not enough because what they're doing is they're not giving you any credit for excess production so if you're making eight kilowatts and only using two and you're exporting six they're not going to pay you next to anything for that isn't that good enough because you're getting free energy that you can sell to other people and make money no that's not enough for them now they got to do this now the answer's always been go batteries and produce and and use your own energy on site but this flat rate would still screw you and I'm telling you right now if that happens if that passes I am going to disconnect the grid and I'm off I'm going off grid I'm tired of sdg e and I'm going to literally make YouTube video for YouTube video recommending to other people how you can do the same thing this channel will become kind of an Avenue how much will cost I'll put all those things together I've already mentioned new roof 30 000 solar thirty thousand right um you can probably save some money there the battery system is probably going to be about 30 000 as well so now we're at 90 000 for the well the new roof doesn't really count because you need a new roof regardless to stay dry and to keep your house safe right but 60 Grand but and then maybe 60 I paid another 60 grand for a solar uh sorry for a battery EV so that's a 120 Grand I do have a loan on the car the other stuff I paid for myself so look like I mentioned it's not cheap but I'm planning to keep those cars for a decade plus I'm planned to live in my house forever uh I I want my kids to come back from college and visit us here that's kind of what we're building here so it kind of depends on you know one thing I will say is you need to figure out if you're going to stay in your house long term before making these moves I I personally think this whole Net Zero thing where eventually I'm getting rid of my natural gas clothes dryer my natural gas water heater and my furnace those are the big three I'm gonna get rid of the clothes dryer with a heat pump clothes dryer and the water heater with a heat pump water heater I shouldn't flipped off the camera apologies I'm gonna do that like now in the next four or five months the furnace I got to figure out because that's going to be a ton of energy usage and I need to make sure that I can keep my family warm at night on the shortest days where the sun's not out very much and I got some data to figure out but eventually I'm gonna get rid of all three of those things but to do those things you're not going to really get that money back no one's going to buy your house because you have a heat pump water heater that money is not going to translate into money when you sell the house especially when people don't really know what that is or the benefit of it right maybe one day they will maybe in Europe people know but odds are that's not going to help you here unless you're staying long term so think of this as like building a bulletproof life like building a life of of control I'm a bit of a control freak for people who know me I and I hate the idea that I have to be reliant on a gasoline powered car and whatever's happening in the world and oil shortages and fluctuating prices I hate to have to rely on a company to prod me electricity I have a roof I don't I think I can do it myself so if you kind of have that feeling think of this as a journey of many many steps the first step is to you know buy your own home there's really no way to go Net Zero if you're a renter there are some cool Tech like you can get the portable power battery and a solar system and kind of go partially off grid potentially but there's HOA considerations and stuff um so that might not be that easy so step one I've always said you know build your buy your own home we have a new comment from Mario he says just don't pay your bill they will shut off you and and put you offered naturally damn I don't know if they'll put me in collections or if it'll hurt my credit score but if I make that joke because in some parts of the in the country in the world it's illegal to go off grid that to me makes me more Furious than anything so first of all you can charge me whatever you want whenever you want change the rules and then I can't even say goodbye and leave you as a customer could you imagine a gym membership where nope sorry you're forever beholden to be here and you can't quit um time share it's not like that temperatures are terrible idea Public Service Announcement never get a time share they're a horrible horrible thing I've heard of countless horror stories where you're basically passing on this horrible thing to your children and they can't get out of it anyway that's kind of what your your grid power utility company is a thing you can't get rid of and in that case I will take Crazy Action I will try to go off grid and if I can't do that I will sue and put together like a um what do you call like a particular group of people and do like a um class action lawsuit against the utility company I'm not able to but I'm not messing around here I've I've I'm I've just been covering this stuff for long enough and I sdging these companies are increasingly going the wrong direction and I'm not going to just sit back for sure it's it's time that we kind of hold them to account and we understand that we have the power before solar panels how are you going to produce your own energy in any meaningful way right now a couple of days uh getting a contract with a company to come install solar my big system was around 30 grand for 30 grand you have a power station on your roof that can produce 1500 killed hours of energy a month here in California now if you live in the East Coast or other places where we get snow or the weather is you know not as formidable is formidable and not so easy to deal with there's other things you can do for example the battery that I'm going with is called Franklin Franklin is the company they're this new startup they're a newer company but they're doing some big things I've been tracking them for a while I've been doing research for a while Tesla's powerwall still is a fantastic option I'm actually installing a power wall my mom and dad's house they live on a farm in the middle of Central Valley California where if their power goes out their water pump because we're on a well that won't run and they don't have water talk about quickly realizing how much you need energy Independence was there a Super Chat one yeah those don't throw it up there really really appreciate the super chats this one's from Edwin Hernandez really appreciate you he says you're a good man Rick I appreciate you Edwin and you're a good man for for the Super Chat really appreciate your support um this started as a small Journey for me but I've quickly realized talking to people my friends viewers people on Twitter I'm trying to get more active on Twitter I I email mailing list messages I have heard from all of you and I I know what I have to do I gotta figure this out and it has to be cost effective and if things are not cost effective I'll let you know which things aren't but thank you so much I appreciate that um but so I'm going with a company called Franklin and Tesla powerwall for my mom and dad because I I already I've been waiting it's been over a year I've been waiting for Tesla that's part of the frustration I have with them is the unknown of when their parts or their products will be available service and stuff those are a little bit of a challenge but they'll have a powerwall and they should be good the power goes out for a day they would still have water power around their house they're very they're old school they're they're very frugal they don't really use much power one single power wall would be probably enough until their solar comes back online the next day but for me the cool thing about the Franklin product is there's it's kind of a modular system there's a thing called the a gate that's kind of the brains of the unit you just need one of those then there's I think they call them a power is there Battery Systems and you can have one you can add another add a third and then the output go you know five kilowatts per battery my goal is to get three batteries which would be 15 kilowatt output which means with my span panel controlling everything I could make no compromises and run my entire house run my air conditioner charge my cars run everything in the office all my stuff and have no problems I could have an entirely off-grid life so that's that's my goal I got to be able to do that but what's really cool with Franklin is they also have a module you can add on that's generator so think of this as like deep deep backup let's say we had a month of non-stop cloudy days or something crazy happened and we we couldn't charge our batteries enough with solar again I mentioned our family lives here and our office and our building and our company lives here then they'd have a generator that could as a latch last ditch effort turn on and produce some power maybe propane based or something and hope to never need it but be prepared and with that I'd be comfortable going off grid because I'm uh as an engineer I always prepare for the worst some people think Engineers are kind of you know kind of Downers because we're always thinking about when it fails right A lot of people get excited about when something goes right but Engineers were literally built to think when everything goes wrong so as a result when everything goes wrong let's say the I don't know there's a volcano eruption and recovered in Ash for a month or something crazy that I could still you know get propane I don't know if propane would be difficult to get but between that and solar I think I could go totally upgrade and that's my goal thank you for the Super Chat Chris Chris Koran he says it's always best to reduce what power you need before and increasing power generation consider retrofitting your home to be super efficient thank you so much Chris I really appreciate you so interestingly and this sucks I hate that the incentives are this way but in California adding a big solar system for 30 grand is actually way cheaper than adding insulation because our labor prices in California are ludicrously high and if I wanted to have all my drywall ripped out have all my walls insulated better you know and thicker and put the drywall back that would cost more than 30 grand and with solar with producing 60 kilowatt hours of solar I could just run the heater a little bit more but I'm a hundred percent with you that that's super wasteful and I hate that the structures are like that getting solar is cheaper than adding insulation that's still backward but unfortunately it is the case I have a video on this solid phase change in building installation from a company called Q Platinum and I am actually going to go hardcore on the installation as well but the problem is it's really disruptive to my life too we live here right so where am I going to go while all the drywalls ripped out and that's going to cost I don't even want to think about it but I'm thinking when I do that I'm gonna also install the gray water system so all the water from the showers and the sink will all go into some sort of reservoir and we'll use that to water the lawn so water is the other part of the equation we haven't forgotten about we're definitely going to do we also are planning to build a vertical Farm Greenhouse with LED grill lighting and stuff that we can grow spinach and other leafy greens heartier things that we can live off of we're gonna get some chickens we're gonna go all out this is going to be kind of a a case study I want to be you know somebody can call me up and have a full idea of what it would take to kind of be fully self-reliant in some ways it's really new school and you know hip and trendy and Technology based and in some ways it's kind of a old school thing right growing your own plants and stuff so I have a lot to learn I'm by no means an expert but I'd love to share all that with you guys and and take your feedback and input uh we'll we'll definitely throw up the chats here and and take your questions at this point but yeah with the battery supply I'm thinking I need 40 kilowatt hours of storage and if my solar is producing 60 and I can Bank 40 so I can use 20 during the day when you know when whatever's happening and then I can charge my batteries overnight I got to basically survive from 6 PM when the Sun starts going down all the way till seven it's about 13 hours of of storage and if I were using two kilowatts two kilowatts uh you know continuously which would be two cold hours an hour over times about 24 gold hours I'd be fine plus a little bit of a bank for a cloudy days other things right so if I can do a 40 kilowatt system 40 uh kilowatt hour battery system as well with a span smart meter which again video coming soon that thing is freaking amazingly cool what it can do it allows you to not have to make any any choices or sacrifices on like a critical loads panel where only these small things work and these things don't work if the power goes out I don't have to make those calls because a span can smart time load shed turn off things that are huge and I can kind of I can classify things as like must have would be nice to have and unnecessary so my pool pump for example I could make it as unnecessary so if the power goes out and my batteries are discharging stop running the pool pump the pool will be fine if it doesn't circulate for a day or two it's not the end of the world but my server and all the computers running in the office I need those like those are very critical so span makes that kind of easy and I have a video that I'm really excited about making shortly that will cover that but with a span 11 kilowatts of solar and 40 kilowatt hours of batteries and that's a rough calculation based on what I've been looking at my home usage I think I'll be there and man yeah I kind of feel stressed thinking about going off grid because then the pressure is on you to have thought of everything I don't know if you guys ever heard the story of there was like a famous architect who designed a a library in New York but forgot to account for the weight of the books so when the books all moved in the the building was having a catastrophic failure because he didn't account for the weight of the books I kind of feel that way again as an engineer I'm always the second doubting and kind of get you know second guessing myself and I'm thinking have I thought of everything what happens if it's so cloudy what if it's raining non-stop what can I survive can I really go off grid but based on what I've been seeing so far with a little bit of a compromise right being a little bit smart I think I can we're also doing a Mr cool DIY heat pump heater and air conditioner in the office currently we have nothing in the office and it was a cold cold winter so we were running like you know space heaters which are not very efficient well they're 100 efficient but they're not very effective we can do much better so we a lot of our commenters and viewers emails we got so many messages about Mr Cool that we're doing that that's going to be happening one this week maybe this week next week we got to do that so we're going to try to cover all these uh all these Technologies and things that we can do to to get there together and you got to remember too I'm going all the way and totally gung-ho you could just take small steps right you could go as little as a portable power station and a couple of solar panels on your patio and just run your laptop and your internet stuff and one fridge and lower your burden on the grid or save a little bit of money you can start small or you can go all the way but do what's right for you don't don't feel the pressure to spend more money than you have or you're comfortable with don't ever do that that's my first advice is solar sales people have come and gone into my door increasingly less because then I will never make a decision with you here I I sleep on things for a week or two a month I think of every you know use case or scenario account for all the things and I do things in a very methodical way it's kind of the engineer in me and I I recommend everyone be the same like don't don't feel pressured to go and do anything especially the one thing I did I was pressuring some of my friends to go solar was to beat beat that um nem3 deadline if you're not familiar let me know if you want to expand on any M3 here in California but basically they've screwed people who export excess solar and make it so you really have to get a battery it's not really that worth it but now that that deadline has come and gone I'm back to no pressure like don't don't do anything you're not comfortable with take Tiny Steps um and build slowly this is a journey and it might take you a decade but how fun will it be to look back and reflect oh I remember when I got solar I remember when I got that new heat pump water heater I got the heat pump geothermal AC right I might do that thinking about it so it's a journey of a thousand miles and it begins with a single step and I'm urging all of you guys to start that Journey today doesn't involve any money yet right just think about how you can survive for a week or two if the power went out and keep your family safe and never be caught unprepared so you know if whatever whatever your situation is we'll start doing these shows and taking more input from the audience and any questions you want to throw up on we'll start taking more feedback from the audience and and kind of we'll do kind of like a uh who am I thinking of you know those like phone calls shows where people call in and go hi my financial my my situation is this I have this much debt what should I do and I give advice like you know about what people should do I'll do that we can have people join the live stream kind of talk about where they are how much they're paying what what they think that we should you know have them focus on or start with and we'll start doing kind of like energy uh energy consulting or something it'll be fun it'll be a fun way for us to kind of to reach out to all of you because as I end this live stream I want to tell all of you guys I appreciate all of you um we get to do this because of you and this dream is a team dream because without all of you guys this ain't happening so I want to bring as much value to you as possible here so there's a question from John he says what is your roof the roof's you factor for or continuous uh insulation r value what is my roof C Factor okay um so my roof is a it's a darker shingle which is not good darker colors absorb more light there's less light reflective back that's why they appear darker which isn't good but for me I'm I'm also really into the look of things I don't want some white roof I wanted the darker roof because I'm going to paint my house a kind of a Alabaster white and I want that contrast with the roof now that being said it is a cool roof it's a I think it's called the Owens cool roof is the product and it's a cool roof because it has special granules that's kind of the sand bits in there that are highly reflective and so they reflect light back and as a result it's a better than an average shingle roof but it is a shingle roof then I have my I have my Roofing wood right the the wood that goes underneath it well there's the uh there's the water paper there's the stuff that keeps the water out the rain out than the wood and I have nothing else from the the roof joist down into the attic and then in my attics I have a little bit of blown in in some places and in some places I have vaulted ceilings where I have nothing in there I don't think because my master bedroom for example has a vaulted ceiling and it gets hot there it gets hot even on a medium hot day so I think I got a lot of drywall to rip out so to answer your question it's not very good the my home was built in the 60s or 70s and there's been some Renovations over the years like they've upgraded the electrical which is cool but the insulation is piss-poor and the only reason why it be it's able to be pissed poor is because in San Diego you can you can get away with it if if my house was in where Matt Farrell lives in Massachusetts you would be dead because your heating and cooling especially your heating your heater could not keep up with how much heat my house is losing it wouldn't be able to keep up and you would freeze to death not to be dramatic but here in California it's a mild inconvenience and a little bit more on your energy bill but in places where you have proper weather where you know where it's negative 20 outside and stuff this house would not cut it um that's the crappy part about California is because our weather is so mild people get away with this stuff like they don't put as much insulation as that earlier comment that I think was Edwin mentioned you should always try to tighten up the the envelope minimize how much heat you're losing or cool your you know your cool is being introduced that way you can use less energy but in California as these Energy prices continue to rise it will be increasingly worth it um but for me I have a lot of things I want to do the gray water capture so when I rip all the drywall out maybe we'll move the family I don't know we'll have to move them somewhere in some small room rip off all the drywall really modernize everything make sure the electrical's up to up to code up just enough gray water capture system where you know the gray water is separated from the Black Water the toilets and stuff and the sink in the in the kitchen all just go right to the Sewer like they do now capture the Rick gray water insulate everything really nicely and then finally put the drywall back up as you can imagine that's going to be really expensive just read drywalling I would imagine it's going to cost 20 grand um in my house so it's going to be painful but I am going to do it I'm not sure if we'll get to it this year because we have a lot of appliances to upgrade so this year might just be solar battery heat pump all the things get rid of all the natural gas stuff and maybe next year because I got I gotta spread the money around right I got to make these projects I got to build a pay uh to pay for them so I might do the hardcore insulation behind the drywall stuff next year what else do we have how many uh so if my wife was on I don't know if she is she would be commenting for all of you guys to hit that like button that's a huge value add for all of us to keep these videos uh being spread out we have 300 viewers which is pretty awesome really feel like we're we're picking up some steam there and um what I would also like to just hear from all of you guys yeah I I feel especially in the last year or two going solar for me it was always a as an engineer I just think it's fascinating to produce my own energy I just think it's cool it was never about money for me I I appreciate saving money on my bills but I've always just been curious right that was why I went solar 12 years ago my first house we made videos about that but now it's becoming a control thing I don't like having so much of my life in other people's hands and when it comes to energy gasoline for your car uh that's kind of the case and this is how we as consumers as a little guy fight back you know any comments one so here's one from Dan appreciate you Dan he says do you think what is going on in California could happen in Canada so I will say Canada is very Progressive Canada leads the way in a ton of stuff some of the coolest companies I've talked to are based in Toronto or like Montreal Vancouver especially Toronto for whatever reason there's just a ton of really cool stuff happening mitrex comes to mind the company that is building remember that company one it's a company that builds solar panels that look like whatever you want see instead of having a traditional building facade sighting you could have it look like wood or marble or glass or whatever but it's actually a solar panel behind producing power it's such a cool company they're they were in Toronto there's a ton of really cool stuff happening there to answer your question absolutely I do think that's possible you know one a lot of these things in the world are about precedence and that's something that lawyers always say is establishing precedence right it's hard to say something is legal or not legal or this should be done until someone does it then once someone has done it and there's been a precedence for it it's easy to spread that's the unfortunate thing here so if California does this and then all the Canada companies will be like oh you know we should do the same thing you know because of low income families we need to support them we need to protect them so unfortunately Canada is um it could happen definitely and we all need to fight back here in California first Phillip says can't you have insulation blown in without removing the drywall yes so the your house is you know walls and roof right the roof and the roof the the ceiling insulation is very important that I could have blown in and that's pretty cheap I could probably have that done for a couple thousand dollars I'd imagine or just go buy a bunch of bats of it and roll it out and and stuff and it's just uncomfortable being up in an attic but totally doable the um the vaulted ceiling is not possible there's no added crawl space it's just joist and then in in in between then there's insulation or no insulation so that would require removing drywall but anywhere where you have an attic where there's like a little you know unconditioned space above blowing in insulation is always a good idea absolutely so that would help you there but not on the sides of your house so heat is coming and going from the floor the walls and the roof so you can put as much insulation as you want but if your walls aren't well inflated you'll see no impact because the heat will just transfer through the walls instead so it helps but uh it's not by any means the end-all be-all how's I saw bong in the comment section how's he doing Bono's one of my one of our good friends he lives very close to me we need to hang out soon what's his comment bong says my my end the engineer in me is what challenged me to get my Roi on my solar system to two to four years so yeah Le bong is talking about is uh he has a solar system and a Tesla powerwall and here in California there's a plan where the companies can ask home owners of batteries for excess production Excess power at really high demand times because otherwise you'd have to go turn on a peak or power plant let's say for example at 7 pm and people are coming home and watching a football game or something and rather than doing that they could just give you money to get a kilowatt hour or two or five from your battery and then just for an hour or two right so that is one of the things I what I wish the utility companies in California would realize is stop being stupid Stop Being Greedy and just stupid and instead be smart you they're Distributors they don't produce energy they buy energy from one place and sell to another be smarter and establish a system where you can incentivize people like bong or myself when I have batteries pretty soon to do the right thing I don't need your energy right now don't export it okay I'll charge my battery in my car in my home don't need it seven o'clock rolls around shoot we're projecting a huge shortage everyone's coming home and turning on their air conditioning it's a hot day hey we need that energy and everybody who's you know has Smart Homes with microgrid kind of tech they could sell energy back to sdg e who then they could go and sell to other customers right make money and then give a little bit of a cut to you that is called being smart that's capitalistic instead of being monopolistic which is what they do they know that they have you by the cojones right they have you there what are you gonna do go to another company I can't I mean there's the community stuff which I need to figure out but the problem there is there's still a distribution okay does that David David says there are companies that inject insulation into walls without removing the drywall um interesting yeah it still sounds expensive because you're going Bay by Bay so you're doing every 16 inches every single between the the uh the the studs so I can look into that that's interesting um but I also don't want to do that because I want to install that QE Platinum phase change material which there's a if you look at our Channel you'll find there's a video that we did on a phase changing installation that basically melts and freezes every day to keep inside really comfortable um so we're gonna do a more holistic thing and again I mentioned the gray water but I'm glad you mentioned that that's really good to know so anybody has insulation that they need to do in the walls there might be easier ways than I'm thinking varric says ever think about a geothermal heat pump or is that even an option in your area fantastic question it is an option it is not popular at all again because our weather is so agreeable right so Matt Farrell from undecided in his new home that he's having built as we speak he is getting a heat pump a geothermal heat pump system from a company called water furnace and I've I've chatted with water furnace and I've thought about it we'll see but for him it's a huge win right when it's really cold outside a typical air heat exchanger heat pump might have to dethaw or you know I might have to go through other processes but if you dig down 20 feet underground that temperature there is probably 55 degrees Fahrenheit and you can extract the heat from that so for Matt it'll be a home run geothermal heat pumps for me it'll be harder to justify for two reasons California is wildly expensive so the labor rate to dig that hole to trench to install this stuff will be higher than anybody else's and our payback period will be longer because our if you live in Phoenix you or Florida and your air conditioner is running 24 hours a day that's not the case where I live the evenings are always cool even in the heart of summer time if at most like the worst of days the AC might run for five hours that's it so you can imagine how long the recoup period would be but I might do it just for the science of it I have an area in my house allocated for it and I might do it Mario again appreciate the super chat buddy I appreciate you is that a second one one that is uh really I think that's Mario's second really appreciate you um thanks for that he says please have more of this off-grid energy videos thanks I'm setting up a small DIY solar ground Mount and carport ah to go with my lightning in Tahoe I grew up in Lake Tahoe Mario I got to come visit you dude from 5 to 15 when I was Age 5 to 15. I grew up in South Lake Tahoe one of the most picturesque iconic childhoods you can imagine and it sounds like he got a lightning oh that'd be great in the snow that sounds really really cool if you don't have anything if you have no other you know means to do anything else when you have an electric car and you have land build a carport put solar panels on top that's actually pretty cheap and ingenious because then you're not losing any ground space you're keeping your car or your truck cool right cover to keep the paint in good shape a car that lives in a garage the paint will never go bad 50 years from now it'll be fine you leave your car outside 10 years later eight years later the clear coat will start fading really really quick so I'm a fan of that idea I love I love it I like the love the lightning Mario let me know what trim you got love that truck Richard gold says oh Richard thank you for the Super Chat really appreciate you Richard says this is to show my appreciation you don't need to you don't need to appreciate me well I do well too late Richard because I appreciate you and I can't take that back that is Forever on the internet thank you sir I really appreciate it I'm I'm just I'm really curious Richard what uh what part speaks to you what are you thinking where are you at on this journey but as I see more comments from more of you I'll know I try to remember a lot of you guys I know a lot of our common viewers I see Dusty in there somewhere um but really appreciate you man John says how deep do you have to dig for geothermal energy or heat excellent question it kind of depends on where you live and what kind of Technology you go with so there's a company I've been chatting with nothing's really moved because I I was so focused on the roof that I didn't really I'm not a good multitasker I'm a I'm a laser beam I just do one thing all the time um it makes it hard to you know exercise and other things I gotta find a good balance but I've been still focused on solar because for me going solar is the starting point I would never in a million years change out to a geothermal heat pump system from natural gas until I had solar because electricity prices here would kill me right they would be even worse than natural gas but now that I have solar and I have my own energy coming in different ball game totally different ballgame so I haven't thought about it very much but there are two ways you can do this one is ground-based so you have big you know coils that are moving a fluid through the ground so for those I've heard 20 feet I think 20 feet is about average I'm not sure if one you're pulling that up no I'll do a video on this later but there's another way you can do it which is like a water based geothermal so imagine you dig 10 feet or so and you bury a massive couple hundred gallon water tank and then you do the heat exchange to water water is a really really good conductor and as a result you could you know it's a smaller system you don't have to have quite as massive uh of a trenching that has to happen so from what I've gathered there might be limits to you know the water will heat or cool right depending on how big the reservoir is and how much you need so you'd have to basically size the the tank to how big your house is or how much you would pull from it but that might be the cheaper way to go and from all my conversations so far that appears to be the case but I'll investigate further on that it's interested geothermal I love sadly I wish what I've learned from talking to you guys is we have a bit of an echo chamber where you guys are also like-minded so you might I might talk to you and think oh everybody's so hip they're talking about geothermal it's not the case outside in the real world outside of our you know nerdy audience of energy enthusiasts these things are nobody knows what a geothermal heat pump is uh ground ground Source heat pumps and stuff sadly and that's why I make these videos because I want it to be better known and I want people to know that they have more options than they think here's a comment from Carlos Carlos how's it going he says what are your thoughts on earth homes and Earth shelters or having a home that has components on them that has components of earth homes they have been around for a while and are very uh seems to be the way to go so like an Earthship would be amazing that would have been a dream of mine but of course that doesn't work if you're buying a house that's already been built the challenge in California is California's California that we have so many people and people are always moving in here and there's a huge home housing shortage so most people will be buying older homes so unless you're going to rip it down and build another trip which is again California's building prices are ludicrous it's never going to happen you got to make do with the retrofit and that's my situation but if you're buying a house in an area that is much cheaper where you can buy a plot of land and do like an Earthship build where a nurse trip is basically kind of using the the ground as the dwelling so you can share it's almost like a geothermal system right you're kind of digging into a Countryside or half the home is buried you build with like recycled materials a lot of like old Rubber and things and it's much more holistic approach to a home where you can use facets of the ground for temp temperature control and Regulation and stuff I think they're wildly awesome they're systems where it rains and it gets captured it goes into a pond you can grow fish you can you know eat your you know make your own food or calories there's all kinds of really cool Integrations that are amazing but I have not looked into them nearly enough but I'll tell you this anybody who has built or lives in an Earth Ship let me know I will and if you're if you're a game I'll fly out there we'll make an episode and you can highlight and showcase your house that's something I want to do for some of you guys because I bet you a lot of you are even further along on this journey than I am like maybe you should be the one running YouTube channel and not me and if that's the case Reach Out get in touch with us and we can showcase your house if your game if that's the thing you want to do and talk about some of the challengers or or things that you've learned that we can all benefit from I'm just one person but the community is massive and you know we could all learn together yeah so this video is kind of the beginning of another chapter in this story of our Channel which is you know energy should be shouldn't be this difficult it shouldn't be so hard to predict you shouldn't wake up one day and suddenly your bills double that's what happened to people in San Diego where sdg e suddenly raised their rate for natural gas in January and February by like 100 doubled your price at the heart of the coldest winter we've ever had you can imagine how would you feel right if suddenly your your bill went from 100 200 a month to 700. I have friends that have small normal average homes smaller than ours that had that happen to them and that's infuriating right and uh we can do better and we don't need them right we can be self-reliant I've always said certain companies certain products you buy you're not just buying a product you're buying an obligation for life if you buy a internal combustion engine car I know they're they're cheaper there's there's benefits to them you're not just buying a car even if you paid off you have bought a lifetime subscription to Shell and Chevron and to BP to be a customer for life because you are never going to make your own gasoline but for three weeks now I have literally spent zero on driving my car because I have charged my car at the peak time and there's so much extra energy instead of exporting it I've been charging my car that's kind of the thing right so I'm a fan of products where you aren't a lifetime customer to anything and you can save money on the Long Haul I would rather pay money to have solar where I break even after so many years and after that it's pure profit and it's mine you get nothing from paying your utility company money all you're doing is lining the shareholder pocket of the pockets of the shareholders which is fine if you're in if you're an investor buy the buy the stock of energy companies but you don't have to be a customer right or at least that's the that's the thinking other at least be prepared for emergencies and that could be a good start any other any other comments Juan really I don't know how long we've been going for here but um yeah I've been going for about an hour uh Dusty's on what what is Dusty saying so in case you guys are wondering I always keep saying Juan Juan is our head editor he does all the camera work he's the lead visual design for the company Dusty is kind of our new producer so dusty is a person who is just a viewer a fan he talked to us on Twitter he joined our Discord and I was so blown away with just how in the know he was that I literally hired him to be our producer sorry could you put that back up again does it automatically time out so that's a that's when I say I appreciate you guys and I this is a community I I mean it so dusty says energy is all about energy is all that matters at the end of the day all of life is energy yeah it's true right every breakthrough is about managing energy or cars or you know a gasoline car is just a manager management of energy as well you have to run big electric drills to refine it uh to drill it out to pump it to ship it to produce it to run a car it's all energy and we live in an era where we don't need to be beholden to anybody like when Edison and Tesla were fighting for AC and DC for the future of grids and distribution they didn't imagine a world where for a decent amount of money and I solar's expensive but honestly it's not that bad they did not imagine a world where people individuals could produce their own energy and not need a grid at all so stay tuned for future videos we'll do micro grids and stuff we're actually going to Italy in a couple of weeks to meet with a company called ABB and they are working on some really cool stuff that we can share with you we'll share more with with you guys uh in a little bit um but they have some really cool stuff around DC microgrids that are going to be really really cool so we'll talk more about that um later on I'm just gonna grab the laptop and check out the comments here if there's anything else but uh uh Jad claf I'm not sure if I'm saying that right says Ricky needs a larger font so this software that we're doing where we're having our your comments on screen this is all new it's a new software that we've only just been using for a little bit but one flow one I've just noticed is this screen that runs the teleprompter needs to be you've run the different other way we need to make the font a little bit easier to read yeah so we might need another computer three computers one to run this and yeah okay uh we're figuring this out together guys I appreciate it Steven says if we could get the home robotic vacuum cleaner to teach the self parking EV to connect you make this joke but uh that reality is like a year away topic for another day we've actually talked a little bit about AI which will we'll touch on more going forward as well but um it's a kind of a crazy world honestly I almost feel like you take a week and just unwind and it leaves you behind it's kind of a scary thought but you got to keep your finger on the pulse and we will try to hear and share our thoughts and findings with all of you guys I love you guys some of these comments are still good um did you put one up there yeah so Richard ghoul says like button friendly reminder from local from local neighborhood awesome thank you Richard yes the like button is one of those um it's free it doesn't cost you anything you got something oh that's blue raver I okay so there we're allowed to have avatars or like screen names on uh our Discord which one could you put a link to our Discord do you have to go to Discord and um get the share link it changes but our Discord is a great place to join as well and on Discord you can have your own screen name so I actually don't know your names in in some of the cases so Richard I've been chatting with Richard for for a long time I never knew his name was Richard thank you I appreciate that and we I now I'll remember that so debunk the junk says after after AI takes out Humanity it will solve the energy crisis so we have nothing to worry about I guess that's good news laughs so vid after dark says what location to submit actual work done with home generation so um let me let me build some sort of a form or something for people to share on our next live stream we'll try to launch that where community members who have really cool off-grid stuff can can showcase some of their stuff can I just do that on Discord yeah did you put the Discord link you did okay let's see if I see it I don't see it where did you where did you add it so Lauren says how far are you from the ocean I'm about 10 10 miles yeah so Stephen Brickwood says vehicles are parked 23 hours a day I I completely agree I think if um we move to more lithium iron phosphate battery chemistries in electric vehicles which we are some of the new Teslas that are rolling out of for example the Giga Austin Factory are the 4680 in lithium iron phosphate chemistry which means much much longer cycle lives and in that case then home running your home when you're not running the car is a really good option my concern with my concern with traditional nmc or NCA chemistries is stuff that are more energy dense and typically make their way into electric cars is they have shorter lifetimes and if you're running your house with it it's going to eat into and grade the range more quickly right and so some companies might not want that but if we had lithium-ion phosphate batteries that are good for six seven thousand charge cycles like deep charge cycles that battery will power your house and your car for like 15 plus years without any worry and I think at that point it's going to be kind of a no-brainer the vehicle to grid vehicle to X vehicle to home debate is interesting a lot of the Tesla fans that I chat with they think we don't need it just buy firewall which is kind of crazy because you're just buying more and more products and you're you're using more battery supply which could go to other customers right I'm a fan of vehicle to home I think we should have it but um yeah I think it'll be a little bit chemistry dependent but the good news is I think a lot of companies are moving to lithium aren't phosphate batteries you might have especially in bigger cars like on a bigger truck the extra weight the lower energy density might not be as much of a problem so uh split uh split sleeve time says can you talk about how you shave you know this is a so we get a comment about my shaving on every video I ever make this might be the first time on a live stream actually but um it's a weird yeah it's a weird thing if I if I fully shave I have this like baby face it doesn't look good you'd agree with me if you saw it trust me and if I grow a beard I also look weird so neither right here the five o'clock shadow that's the that's a patented look foreign Ark says this is a good chance that hydrogen will come out ahead so look I'm not a um as an engineer I believe in diversity of options because if more smart people are working on options from around the world you never know which one might take maybe there's some new breakthrough in hydrogen that works out I don't I'm not I don't know about hydrogen for Consumer cars I think batteries are just we're there already and imagine how much better they're going to get every passing year but hydrogen may be for energy storage larger vessels shipping there's a whole slew of some really interesting options out there in fact there's a company that makes a hydrogen energy storage system for homes and I've I've reached out to them I haven't heard back just yet but if I ever do and they you know give me some access to go chat with them or something or try one out I will totally do that um yeah compress hydrogen at home kind of scary but to be honest like that energy is scary the more energy you have in a smaller package that's scary right that's why nuclear is scary that's why highly energy dense batteries are scary gasoline is scary you ever seen a car fire there's it's kind of scary when all that energy is released but we need to store energy the future is going to be electric Mark that down that's the prediction I'm 100 sure of the future is going to be electric uh gasoline is not going to it's not gonna be competitive coal was not competitive years ago even like natural gas peaker power plants will not be competitive nuclear is not going to be competitive I think uh you know we're going to see a world where electrification is going to take over all parts of different Industries just a matter of time so producing and storing it is Paramount and we don't need anybody to help us we can do that literally ourselves with our own homes and that's the part that I nerd about all the time all right I think that is a good place to wrap up what do you think Juan we're good uh ethanol let's go Brandon says ethanol ethanol ethanol ethanol is really interesting the the challenge there is how you grow it right because I mean we have a food shortage too so now you're using farmland to grow something not for eating so there's some challenges but uh it is a pretty carbon neutral alternative because you're growing something to then burn and grow and burn is kind of an interesting philosophy but uh could could be ethanol is amazing as far as fuels go ethanol is just a killer it's way better than natural uh petroleum so I'm a big fan the future uh we'll end with this one of the most prophetic comments I've ever seen from Chris Koran who says the future is the future I think you just might be right thank you guys so much for watching again a lot of the topics that we talked about today will make full dedicated videos about into the future I think we're entering an era where some of these things just can't wait anymore and I will definitely share it all with you thanks so much for watching if you mentioned a lot of really fun stuff coming up so if you haven't already hit that subscribe button join us for the ride and be a part of the community join our Discord and that way you can chime in we have a lot of really cool conversations around solar and cars batteries alternative stuff future attack all kinds of really cool nerdy things that we can jam out about and you would be surprised how much we learn from from some of our Discord conversations and stuff love our future videos that we make come from some of you guys so join the group join the two-bit tribe and uh we'll see you guys next week thanks so much for watching

Channel: Two Bit da Vinci

Views: 22,147

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Id: wLJFO5iHP8k

Length: 80min 50sec (4850 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 16 2023