• TrudeauCastroson [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    18 days ago

    My top concern in switching to electric lawn equipment is removable battery storage in the winter, and battery degregation/range concerns.

    I bought a used 4 stroke lawnmower from someone moving away, and it mows my whole lawn.

    Considering the rate at which my laptop battery deteriorated, I don’t think the lawn mower battery would last 2 years if I want to do my whole lawn at once.

    Electric replacements for 2 stroke stuff is definitely way better, I love my electric trimmer/edger. It’s easier to charge a battery than mix the oil/gas and smell all that purposely burned oil.

    I hope you live somewhere you can sell that solar energy back to the grid, batteries are the worst part of electrifying stuff. I wonder if anyone’s built a water tower in their backyard for energy storage. Pump it up during the day, release the water down into a cistern at night.

    • Justice
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      18 days ago

      Yeah, we can sell electricity back but I looked into it at some point and I believe they buy it for less than they sell it…a lot leas, IIRC. You should end up making money but in reality still end up with a (obviously substantially smaller) electric bill.

      What a great country, btw. Instead of opening the flood gates and sucking individual owners who can and want to go solar, the states are like “woah woah woah hold up there, buddy. You still gotta pay the electric company that we totally are actually “regulating” and not them regulating us…”

      I think the dream for these electric companies is you still pay them basically what you pay now, but you produce the electricity via solar, you sell it to them at 1/5 of the actual rate, and they resell it to businesses at an even more jacked up rate. They’re just another level of rent seeking… literally everything boils down to scams on top of scams.

      My areas REQUIRES everyone pay a small monthly fee to the natural gas company (private but “regulated” and oh btw the cost of gas is going up I think they said 25% this summer when no one is watching so it’s all baked in for the winter…). So even if you had full solar or dug a geothermal thing for heating, still gotta pay that fee for the convenience of potentially being able to have natural gas. It’s in some local law or whatever… amazing country.

      All roads lead to scams when they should lead to “fuck you, that’s a public utility now.”