Sometimes solar-charged driving just pisses people off. Yes, I kid you not, it truly gets some folks frothing at the mouth.
For instance, this guy, who recently posted one of the nastier comments we’ve seen at SolarChargedDriving.Com below a story about one of the nicest guys I’ve met, Paul Moore, founder of DrivingOnSunshine.Com.
We’ll start by publishing what the angry guy – a.k.a. “Ornal Schlombecker,” who we assume is American — wrote, and then we’ll respond to “Ornal.”
We’d also love to hear your ideas on what it is, exactly, about solar-charged driving that — to draw on some classic 1970s slang — makes some folks out there so “huffy.”
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Sorry, Ornal’s comment is a bit incoherent, but his rage clearly shines through. Here it is, in all of its un-edited beauty –>
Yeah and a “business” which burns fossil fuels at an 85% energy loss to charge EVs is such a good idea. Of course the idiot who drove beyond his EVs point of no return is probably stupid enough to pay $80 for a ten mile charge. Oh and forget that “electron bank crap. You don’t “bank” anything to the grid. Your panels produce electricity which is used by others immediately and then you buy power generated with coal or nuclear fuels. Get your facts straight and get back to us or better yet, get a real job.
–Ornal Schlombecker (clearly a psuedonym)
Dear Ornal,
I’m not sure why the electric car + solar combination gets you so angry.
Perhaps it’s the fact that EV + PV makes tremendous environmental and economic sense, the fact that it helps get America off of foreign oil, increases our national security, reduces the need to put American troops in harm’s way, creates local jobs, and keeps money here in the United States rather than sending it overseas that makes you so livid.
Or maybe it’s fact that the home solar + electric vehicle combination delivers near total fueling independence that gets your blood boiling. After all, fueling independence — as opposed to suckling on the you-know-what of Big Oil — is, well, just so airy-fairy, so not manly.
Or perhaps it’s the tens of thousands of dollars in gasoline savings that solar-charged driving can deliver to individual consumers such as me, and, yes, you — that really gets you fuming.
Or maybe what really pisses you off is the way that EV + PV truly empowers individuals, and, in one fell swoop, rescues them from a lifetime of being held hostage to the whims of global oil prices.
Or maybe it’s the extreme convenience and efficiency of solar-charged driving that makes you feel like you need to blow your stack. You know, the fact that you can plug an EV in in your garage or driveway and fuel it with electricity that’s travelled as little as a few meters from one’s rooftop to the car battery — as opposed to the thousands of miles oil must travel, oh so “efficiently,” in order to find its way into your gas tank, that really flummoxes you.
Or maybe what really pisses you off is the way that EV + PV truly empowers individuals, and, in one fell swoop, rescues them from a lifetime of being held hostage to the whims of global oil prices.
I know those things would get me really angry, too — if I were a Big Oil company executive, an Oil Sheikh, or maybe a hedge fund manager at a company that specializes in foreign investments.
Banking solar kWh
You are correct that you cannot save the actual electricity you produce with a grid-tied solar system. This is something we are quite aware of and about which we have written multiple times at SolarChargedDriving.Com.
And a bunch of other places, too.
In fact, where we live, you can bank your kWh, economically speaking.
We’ve banked 3,300 kWh with our utility, Xcel Energy, in just nine months with our 5.59 kW home solar system. We can use those 3,300 kWh when we get our new EV in September of 2011 and not pay a penny for any of them. They’re already paid for!
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By the way, 3,330 kWh is about $2,000 worth of gasoline savings in the U.S. (it’s worth far more in Europe!).
Generally speaking, gasoline savings are not something most people get angry about — except, perhaps, when they realize they’re missing out on those savings themselves.
We’ve written quite a bit about the economic savings that banking the extra kWh your solar system produces, for instance, in the following entry — http://solarchargeddriving.com/editors-blog/on-going-solar/414-solar-tip-roll-over-extra-electricity-you-produce.html — which, with nearly 1,800 hits, is one the most popular on SolarChargedDriving.Com.
We do get our facts straight here at SolarChargedDriving.Com. Perhaps you ought to take a bit more time to surf around SolarChargedDriving.Com and read more of what we’ve written before you jump to angry, hasty and unfounded conclusions about our site as well as about EV + PV in general.
Sincerely,
Christof Demont-Heinrich
Editor & Founder, SolarChargedDriving.Com
+ Full Time Journalism Professor at the University of Denver (Yes, I have a real job)
Related articles–>
- Extra solar production = future gasoline savings
- Anti-EV greenies just don’t seem to get it
- How many Sun Miles® can a Nissan LEAF get you?
Solar tip: Roll over extra electricity you produce
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