What we need is battery arrays

I absolutely agree. My support for nuclear is not instead of renewables, but in addition to it. Nuclear is a proven technology, and at least in the US, we have a lot of space where we can store waste relatively inexpensively (nobody’s going to care about a massive landfill in Nevada).

The problem with going for 100% renewables is that I don’t think we can really keep up with battery production, and if we push for dramatically increasing our energy storage capacity (whether that’s chemical batteries, pumped hydro, etc), it’s going to cost a ton to transition. Solar is cheaper than nuclear, but solar + battery backup currently is not, especially if it needs to run over the winter when solar generation is much lower.

I’m not saying we should stop installing battery-backed solar projects, but that we should add nuclear to the list. Our electricity demand will only continue to increase, so we need multiple solutions to replace coal and eventually natural gas. One of the major cost and time limitations for nuclear is construction, and that’s because we don’t build many of them. If we line up multiple plant projects at the same time, we can make better use of our engineering resources (it’s a lot easier to build 10 of something back to back than 10 of something months or years apart), which will make nuclear more attractive compared to other options.

gas can not stay the main way to heat homes

Agreed, and I’ve actually been looking into heat pumps for my own home. I already have an external AC unit, so theoretically the transition shouldn’t be that hard (air ducts already exist).

The problem is that, in my area, winters get pretty cold, and heat pumps are a lot less efficient at heating when it’s cold. The solution is to dig a deep hole to bury the heat exchangers so they get a more consistent temperature to maintain efficiency, and that’s a really expensive project for existing structures (not bad for new construction). The transition to heat pumps is going to be very slow because of that large upfront cost/poor efficiency in winter.

Even if this wasn’t an issue, there’s still the massive problem of existing electricity production (in my area) being fueled by coal and natural gas. If I switch to a heat pump, I may be polluting more than if I stuck with gas (it’s pretty close last I checked). My state (ignoring transportation) gets something like 1/3 of its energy from coal, about half from natural gas, and most of the rest comes from solar (and a little from wind). We need something to handle that base load supply, and installing batteries is going to be expensive (esp. since hydro isn’t really an option in our desert) and probably take many years regardless. Nuclear can be built today, and in my area, it can be built on the other side of a mountain range from the bulk of the population.

Warm water is an amazing energy storage medium

I doubt we have enough water here in the desert to handle that. We already have problems with our existing inconsistent water supply for regular users, locking up even more water is going to be a really tough sell.

How did you manage that??

Yup, but population density should be what matters, because that implies how much usable space there is for waste disposal.

Idk, Finland has a much lower population density vs Germany. France is something like 1/2 the population density, but they also have >50 reactors, so surely Germany can find room for a few…

Was it? Huh, I guess I avoided it thoroughly enough to not remember when it launched.

What isn’t sensible about nuclear? For context, I’m coming from the US in an area with lots of empty space (i.e. tons of place to store radioactive waste) and without much in the way of hydro (I’m in Utah, a mountainous, desert climate). We get plenty of sun as well as plenty of snow. Nuclear should provide power at night and throughout the winter, and since ~89% of homes are heated with natural gas, we only need higher electricity production in the summer when it’s hot, which is precisely what solar is great for.

So here’s my thought process:

• nuclear for base load demand to cover nighttime power needs, as well as the small percentage of homes using electricity for heat
• solar for summer spikes in energy usage for cooling
• batteries for any excess solar/nuclear generation

If we had a nuclear plant in my area, we could replace our coal plants, as well as some of our natural gas plants. If we go with solar, I don’t think we have great options for electricity storage throughout the winter.

This is obviously different in the EU, but surely the nordic countries have similar problems as we do here, so why isn’t nuclear more prevalent there?

If France can find space, surely Germany can.

Not taking a picture, but here’s what I have:

• Ryzen 1700 in a giant case sitting on my desk (desktop PC is on top of that in a mini-ITX case); 2x 8TB HDDs, connected to network over Wi-Fi; hope to cut the size significantly once one of our ITX boxes need an upgrade (both Ryzen 5600s)
• Mikrotik router (5 port) and Ubiquiti AP sitting next to my bed; Mikrotik handles my local static DNS for my public services

Running:

• Jellyfin, as well as Samba and some other NAS stuff
• HomeAssistant (nothing monitored though, but I plan to add my Sensi thermostat soon)
• Actual Budget
• Nextcloud
• Vaultwarden (currently unused, plan to switch soon)

I also have a VPS to get around CGNAT, and I have a Wireguard VPN configured so communication is encrypted.

Plans:

• upgrade NAS to either a mini-ITX motherboard or a mini-PC w/ external USB-C enclosure
• actually run Ethernet - have been putting off for years
• configure my Sensi thermostat in HA and maybe get some other smart home crap
• use Nextcloud more - want to get SO using the notes app so I can finally kill Google Notes for shared shopping lists
• port my PF spreadsheet to LibreOffice and actually learn to use LO Calc (currently using Google Sheets); I use GoogleFinance func for stock quotes, so I need to replace that with some other workflow (mostly rebalancing investments)
• replace our TV or at least have an alternative for Jellyfin - the config disappears whenever our TV WiFi screws up, which is like 2-3x/month; screw you LG…

So yeah, somewhat simple. My family likes Jellyfin, but I haven’t really gotten them on board with anything else.

Yup, a live image works in a pinch. IMO, just use BTRFS on root and install something like snapper to handle snapshots and you shouldn’t need the live USB (unless you bork your bootloader somehow).

Here’s how I think about it. If my NAS goes down and I need a specific file from backup, how would I get that? With OCIS, everything is stored with a hash, whereas with Nextcloud it’s stored by filename. So to me, Nextcloud seems easier to deal with.

Nope, I live in Utah, US, which is mostly coal, natural gas, and solar, in that order, and we’ve been scaling coal back significantly and replacing it with gas and solar (and a little wind). We’re about average for the US:

The average cost per kWh in the U.S. as of January 2024 is 15.45 cents

That said, I heard that our local electricity company wants to hike rates, and that seems to be about $0.03/kWh. So my range would go up to $0.15-0.18/kWh, which still isn’t that crazy.

Really? I’m far too lazy to list things like that. If I was, I’d be buying a lot more than 10 and make a little business out of it.

Here’s my current bill:

• usage - 420 kWh
• total - $58.86 (mix of winter and summer usage)
• stated rate - $0.09-0.10/kWh for “block 1”, 0.10-0.12 for “block 2” (they charge more the more you use)
• calculated average rate (inclusive of all fees and credits) - $0.14/kWh

And here’s my previous bill (all summer usage w/ AC and whatnot):

• usage - 522 kWh
• total - $80.17
• stated rate - $0.09/kWh for “block 1,” $0.117/kWh for “block 2”
• calculated average rate - $0.154/kWh

That’s why I gave the $0.12-0.15/kWh range, because it depends on time of year, total usage, etc. It’ll probably be closer to $0.12/kWh next month since we’d use hardly any electricity (we use natural gas for heat).

That really depends. If you’ll eventually get a NAS, I recommend a NAS HDD because they do better with 24/7 operation. They also use a bit less power than desktop HDDs (which you shouldn’t get anyway, just get an SSD for your desktop/laptop), if you care about that.

I use two WD Red HDDs in my NAS (just an old desktop PC), and I’ve had Hitachi in the past. I use SSDs exclusively for my gaming desktop and laptop though, because performance is a lot more important than cost.

Power costs would have to be bonkers for it to matter.

8TB NAS HDDs are <$200, so even if it uses 15W vs 3W, that’s 12W difference, or 8-9kWh/month. If you pay a ridiculous $0.40/kWh, that’s $40/year. That means the SSDs would pay for themselves after ~15 years, and I’m guessing you’d replace/upgrade them long before then.

But NAS drives use a lot less than 15W, usually around 4-6W idle. So the payoff period is probably closer to 30 years… My electricity is more like 0.12-15/kWh, so it’s never going to pay back for itself.

I started and ended up bailing. The deciding factor for me was the way data is stored with OCIS (basically hashes), so backup/restore would be a much larger pain. So I’m sticking with Nextcloud as much as I hate PHP and dislike the performance issues.

The fridge is the important factor here because cold makes it separate slower. But then it’s hard to spread, especially for almond butter.

We end up taking it out of the fridge a bit before needing it, which helps, but it’s still a nuisance, and if I forget to put it back for whatever reason, I have to go re-mix it, which takes a few minutes.

Depends on how well you grind it.

Yup, we like it, but you either need to store it in the refrigerator or stir it every time, which really sucks, especially if you only eat it occasionally.

When I lived closer to a WinCo (across the street), I would just go get fresh made peanut butter every so often when we ran out, and it wasn’t an issue. Now we get bigger portions, and it’s a pain having to stir it since we only eat it a couple times/month.

I’m honestly happy about this because I think car manufacturers are inflating prices and pocketing the difference. I feel like subsidies in general are pretty inefficient uses of taxpayer dollars.

I think we should pair this with a carbon tax so gas cars are less desirable, as well as reducing tariffs on EVs to keep the market competitive. However, we all know that’s not happening.

But on net, I think pre-credit EV prices will come down a bit to stay competitive with gas cars. It won’t be quite as attractive as with the credit, but estimates show a 7% difference by 2030 (35% w/ credit vs 28% w/o credit), so the difference isn’t huge. I think we’ve already crossed the tipping point where adoption will be pretty quick, so this just puts a small damper on that adoption.