Honesty is the best policy. There seems to be some confusion about this. It’s not the best policy so Jesus will love you. He already does. It’s the best policy. Period.
My father infuriated me during my adolescence as he had all these little maxims that he seemed to live by. Unexplained and unthought through, or so I thought using what bit of intellect I was able to sport at age 15. In the intervening 46 years I have learned the hard way that most of those are serious timesaving shortcuts on issues that were worked out several hundreds or thousands of years ago. I can spend an endless amount of time arguing with them and attempting to disprove them. Oddly it always comes out the same.
I was ENORMOUSLY encouraged by the results of the November 8 election. And on so many fronts.
At age 61 I thought that I could no longer really be surprised at anything. I was delightfully wrong on this.
First was the stark, barren, unashamed, unapologetic, brashly open lengths that alt-left players will go to in order to achieve power. They have no bounds. THey will say or do ANYTHING, including pay people to disrupt and incite violence, fabricate wholesale mythologies with FULL knowledge of their falsehood and a cynical smirk that you CAN fool some of the people some of the time. IT is deeply cynical and deeply evil.
Two of the surprises were of course Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Both were given zero chance of even making the scoreboard at the outset. Bernie Sanders did amazingly well against all odds and probably would have won the Democratic primary had it not been for some deeply cynical, actually evil, and certainly illegal activities by Hillerary Clinton supporters and the Democratic National Committee. And of course Donald Trump actually won the election.
I had a position for several months that the dream ticket would be Trump/Sanders 2016. Bernie wouldn’t play so it didn’t happen.
I agreed with only ONE of Bernie Sanders almost comical policies and positions – a kind of Ron Paul isolationist position AGAINST American military adventurism. Oddly he and Trump were in violent agreement on this and actually shared an almost identical view on globalism and the decline of American working class manufacturing jobs.
Ironically, the Ron Paul isolationist view was the ONLY policy I can think of off the top of my head that I agreed with from either or both candidates. So what am I on about?
Both men did a very good job of TELLING THE TRUTH.
Now we can argue endlessly about whether or not either one of them knows what the “truth” even is. Or what IS is for that matter. I’m not referring to their accuracy or wise leadership. I’m referring to the fact that anytime either was asked a direct question, they gave a direct and honest answer that they BELIEVED to be the truth. This was without regard to the quality of the question, the credibility of the questioner, or the impact it would have on the American electorate.
Bernie Sanders is an unapologetic socialist with economic and social views that almost represent and encyclopedic compilation of every human organizational meme in history that has in fact demonstrably failed at least repeatedly. I find it strains credulity that anyone can even seriously HOLD any such views. But I have to say I believe he DOES hold them because he is very forthright, even crotchety, in presenting them as his honest beliefs.
Similarly Trump. I don’t really agree with ANY of his policies save the views on military adventurism. But I believe HE believes they are best and he articulated them quite honestly. This was more starkly evident as the press/alt-left ROUTINELY and very dishonestly characterized almost everything he said as racist, mysogynistic, homophobic, Islamaphobic, etc. etc. As I was privileged to hear what he DID say, I was on a daily basis impressed not with him, but how deeply and evilly dishonest the press and alt-left were in their characterizations.
And I found it rare to encounter anyone particularly enthusiastic about trade tariffs, immigration, building walls, or conversely in the case of Sanders, free education, free medical care, confiscating all the money, or passing it out to the homeless at random. In short, it was not their policies and views that were popular, it was their HONESTY. Assuming both were heroically flawed and totally incompetent to be POTUS, they were HONEST about it and I think the American people homed right in on that viscerally and emotionally.
In contrast were the 16 other Republican contenders on the one side, and of course Hillerary the Clintonite on the other. It was readily and visibly apparent with ALL of them that every question and every answer was carefully gaged, measured, crafted, and delivered to appease whoever the questioner was, whatever the question, and anyone else who might be listening and of course that it be “politically correct.”
This was true of the BEST of them. And of the worst. But in the case of Hillerary, it actually was a little playlet with an answer, a qualifier at the end of the answer to provide plausibly deniability, a raised eyebrow to indicate or “dog whistle” that I know this is a freaking lie, and a little smirk indicating further that “I know YOU know it is a freaking lie, but of course there’s not a thing you can do about it.” And even if you can PROVE its a lie my people won’t believe you…
It is my belief that at least half the electorate weren’t fooled, and were sickened by the politico speak. And so both Trump and Sanders were quite popular and drew tens of thousands of enthusiastic supporters to rallies all across the country, while Marco Rubio and Hillerary Clinton were hard pressed to find a VENUE that would allow their 135 loyal followers at their event to LOOK like a bunch of people even given the evilly deceitful accommodating tight lens shots provided by the adoring media.
On election day, as we all know now, it mattered. And for all you “popular vote” groupies, who barely even know what that is or why it’s a problem, Overall Trump won approximately 2,600 counties to Clinton’s 500, or about 84% of the geographic United States. However, Clinton won 88 of of the 100 largest counties (including Washington D.C.). Without these 100 largest counties she would have lost by 11.5 million votes. Yes, there are a LOT of votes in downtown NYC, downtown San Francisco, and downtown Los Angeles. Not all of us think they represent America. More accurately, statistically they represent more of America’s criminals and criminal activity than any place else in the country.
So I believe there was a visceral and positive reaction to honesty, and an actual and palpable revulsion in response to dishonesty. In all its forms.
And apparently they can’t be bought either. Hillerary spent $497,808,791 to Trump (the rich kid) $247,541,449. Yes, Hillerary DOUBLED the money spent on the campaign over the guy she lost to. Outside money? Hillerary $189,453,103 to Trump’s superPAC support of $59,389,531. OVER THREE TIMES as much for Hillerary. And she lost. Bigly.
Hillerary never really laid out any sort of vision for America with ONE exception. She did mention several times solar power on every roof and millions of jobs that would spawn. I’m all about that? Trump on energy? He’s going to bring back coal mining jobs by going to something called CLEAN coal. He was quite honest about it. He believes it. That’s kind of a problem actually.
So Trump didn’t win on policy. And he didn’t win on money. The only thing that mattered to Americans this cycle was honesty. In all the post-loss analysis done by Democrats, we can rest easy that they will be losers for the next 20 years because they will not read and will not follow the easy formula I am going to provide here for them to win.
It’s nice to be nice.
Honesty is the best policy.
And you can argue those without end, but Dad was right along and I should have listened more carefully.
And so I am all bouncy not over who won or what policies are going to be implemented, but because my fellow citizens exhibited a strong discernment and wisdom based on this. They saw through the lies and the shameless shenannigans, and made their choice. I would love for two or three more elections to hammer this home. If your honesty and ethical behavior are not up to par, your money and your policies don’t really matter. You aren’t going to be elected.
All that by way of introduction. The REAL game changer for me was in Florida over AMENDMENT 1. This was a ballot initiative on the topic of Solar energy that is fascinating on so many points and so many ways I can scarce describe it. First, it WON and at the same time LOST at the ballot box – BOTH ON THE SAME DAY this past November 8th. The vote count was 4,560,682 in FAVOR of the Amendment and 4,418,788 opposed. So it won with a scant 50.79% of the ballot. It also LOST. This was because to amend the Florida constitution it has to get a supermajority of 60% of the electorate.
Titled Rights of Electricity Consumers Regarding Solar Energy Choice the SUMMARY text of the bill read This amendment establishes a right under Florida’s constitution for consumers to own or lease solar equipment installed on their property to generate electricity for their own use. State and local governments shall retain their abilities to protect consumer rights and public health, safety and welfare, and to ensure that consumers who do not choose to install solar are not required to subsidize the costs of backup power and electric grid access to those who do
Doesn’t that sound good? A constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to put solar on your roof? Actually it’s the last mumbled part about not having to subsidize costs of backup power and electric grid access that would allow Utility companies to simply charge Solar power advocates such exhorbitant rates for “grid access” as to effectively KILL SOLAR IN THE STATE OF FLORIDA FOREVER.
This was so misleading that it spawned a Florida Supreme Court case ruling on whether or not it was misleading. The court allowed the obviously dubious wording to stand in a 5-4 split decision.
The backers of the bill were of course the Utility companies. As of November 16, 2016, the support campaign group for Amendment 1, Consumers for Smart Solar, had raised $26,368,925.00 and spent $25,473,805.24. Of this, Duke Energy $6,736,998, Florida Power and Light Company $7,495,000, Tampa Electric Company $3,037,347, and Gulf Power Company $2,124,450.
According to the Florida campaign finance report activity, the group leading the opposition campaign for Amendment 1, Floridians for Solar Choice had raised a total of about $2.4 million in contributions and had spent $1,631,971.17 as of October 31, 2016.
So $25.5 million against $1.6 million did render a 50.79% win, but it lost. A 10:1 ratio of expenditures and advertising on an absolutely and deliberately confusing ballot initiative FAILED to be enacted. And along the way there was a leaked audio tape. We like leaks and WikiLeaks as that is where we get truth, since it is unavailable from the people we pay to run our affairs.
On October 18, 2016, an audio tape containing a speech delivered by Sal Nuzzo, vice president of the Florida-based policy think tank called the James Madison Institute (JMI), at the October 2 State Energy/Environment Leadership Summit was leaked. Nuzzo discussed how the Amendment 1 support group, Consumers for Smart Solar, asked JMI to help prepare for the amendment campaign and indicated that the measure was designed to appeal to pro-solar voters while it’s purpose was to “completely negate anything they (pro-solar interests) would try to do either legislatively or constitutionally down the road.” He referred to the group’s move of qualifying Amendment 1 for the ballot as a “savvy maneuver,” saying that the group could use “political jiu-jitsu” to harness the popularity of solar in their favor.
Nuzzo said that Amendment 1 proponents approached JMI when Floridians for Solar Choice, which opposed Amendment 1, started an initiative petition drive to put an amendment on the ballot designed to make solar production a right, prevent fees on solar producers, and boost the financial incentive for third-party solar energy providers. Nuzzo stated, “So Consumers for Smart Solar came to JMI and said you guys are the adults in the room, you’re the ones that have access to the research, to the scholars, to the SPN, to a lot of the national organizations, we need some help because not only are they [Floridans for Solar Choice] going to get the 700,000 signatures to get it on the ballot, it’s actually polling in the 70 percent range.” Nuzzo said Consumers for Smart Energy proposed their competing initiative, which was on the ballot as Amendment 1, and Nuzzo then described the initiative as an intelligent strategy to combine pro-solar language with consumer protections that could be used to block the efforts of solar advocates to provide incentives for solar expansion. https://soundcloud.com/cmd-sourcewatch/an-incredibly-savvy-maneuver
So again, absolutely dirty tricks, lies, and subversion coupled with a 10:1 money advantage DIDN’T WORK. With 9 million votes cast, it is clear that 90% of the electorate didn’t actually have a dog in this fight. But they saw through the deception and did the right thing anyway.
Why is this important? You can convince an honest man to change his position based on additional information and cogently presented reasoning. You can’t convince a crook of anything. Those who stoop to such tactics as PAYING people to go demonstrate and attempt to incite violence at an opponents rally, who lie in response to every question and at every opportunity, and whose associates routinely KILL THEMSELVES, often with three to five shots to the temple, will stop at nothing to achieve their ends. They believe they know what’s best for us, and there is no particular boundaries limiting how they get the power to enable that – for the good of everyone of course. As FBI Director James Comey famously noted, “I would have liked to prosecute Hillery Clinton, but I was afraid I might commit suicide later if I did.” Ok. In all honesty, he never said that…
But at this very moment there is a recount going on in Wisconsin of a vote everyone agrees will never be overturned. The strategy is to have a recount and do it slowly, so that the deadline for the electoral college certification is missed and so those electoral college votes won’t be counted. It is pathetic, will change nothing, but amply illustrates the LENGTHS these people will go to subvert the system. How do they think this will ever get anyone elected? The hubris and condescension are insulting.
By contrast Donald Trump thinks waterboarding and torture are ok if it keeps America safe. I do NOT think the ends justifies the means. But in their first conversation, General Mattis dismissed the concept saying the information gained was of no value, and you would do better with a cup of coffee and a pack of cigarettes. Trumps response? Didn’t know that. Ok. No torture then. He believed he was hearing from an honest man that WOULD know, and accepted his answer and changed his point of view on the topic in twelve smooth seconds. This point of view came from a knowledgeable source, made sense as presented, and actually changed Trump’s view on the spot. All of this in a few minutes.
In this episode we note that Tesla has completed their merger with Solar City and describe a fascinating project on the island of Tau in American Samoa to bring totally silent clean photovoltaic power to the island – replacing diesel generators that consumed a half million gallons of diesel fuel brought in by ship. This month, India completed what is now the largest photovoltaic array in the world at 648 Megawatts. Fiat is leasing their 500e electric car for $49 per month with nothing down. And EVTV has completed their 13.4 kW solar upgrade with controllers and inverters and CHAdeMO fast chargers to allow you to totally power your electric car with sunlight. European automakers have announced plans for 350kw charging network across Europe effective almost immediately. I rather FAILED to mention in this video Musk’s application to the FCC for permission to launch a 4425 satellite low earth orbit Gigabit Internet network that will bring high speed Internet to every corner of the earth.
So what’s not to like? President Obama did none of that. President Trump is unlikely to do much of it either. But here’s what I WOULD like to convince Trump of.
Honesty IS the best policy. And sunlight is the best disinfectant. And secrets really are not good for anyone, and particularly not good for Hillerary Clinton. If you are doing something you don’t want your mother knowing about, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. While Edward Snowden actually did us a great service in calling our attention to what the government was doing to our privacy, they are all welcome to read my e-mails if they have the time. But what Julian Assange did in publishing e-mails of those in government is heroic. We do have a need to know. And we do have a RIGHT to know, what our public servants are doing while in our employ. We may have some right and expectation to privacy for ourselves. But THEY DO NOT. If you accept ANY position in government, you have an OBLIGATION to transparency. You have NO right to privacy.
I am not going to spend much time trying to persuade Donald Trump to install solar on his Trump Tower. But what I will try to persuade him to do:
1. Immediately pardon Juian Assange and Edward Snowden and end this illegal and inhumane overseas captivity of these two AMERICAN HEROS.
2. Grant Julian Assange citizenship and a U.S. passport to go wherever he wants worldwide.
3. Make a personal contribution of $1 million dollars to the Wikileaks Foundation. I gave them $1000 myself. You have to be 1000x my net worth.
While critical of the press, WikiLeaks was the ONLY press we had that told us the truth in the past two years. If you want to drain the swamp, how about letting a little sunlight in. You can attack the BEHAVIOR of the press while at the same time strongly defending the right to a FREE AND OPEN PRESS with this singular gesture. WikiLeaks actually gave a textbook demonstration of where our own press falls short.
I would advocate giving him a cabinet position, but I don’t think he would accept and he can do us all a great deal more service outside government than in. The concept that he is somehow backed by the Russians is absurd. He has outed more Russian misbehaviour than he has our own.
The guy has been held a virtual captive for four years, apart from his three children, entirely based on a vengeful U.S. government vendetta to extradite and prosecute him not for espionage, but for publishing leaked information coming from inside the U.S. government. And all of Hilleraries e-mails, foundation bribery schemes, and DNC shennanigans were likewise entirely based on INTERNAL leaks, not on the easy devil in the corner Russians. Indeed none of it was ever “hacked”. It was simply handed over by employees within those organizations who failed to buy into the belief system that anything goes as long as we get our way.
Thank you once again for publishing your thoughts.
Thanks for referring to Clinton’s globalists as the Alt-Left.
Thanks for including the election map by county because it clearly shows that the areas where the food is grown and the manufacturing is done did not buy into the Alt-Left’s lies.
Here, in the deep blue area I live in, some people are nearly hysterical over the Trump victory. They are deeply afraid of the strawman that the mainstream media created that depicted Trump as an evil person. Some are terrified that their mixed race children will be persecuted or that their foreign born in-law will be deported even though they are completely legal.
Now the Alt-Left is doubling down on this rhetoric and it is not nice. Not nice at all.
It is awe inspiring to me. A significant portion of our population has watched in real time this play out over the course of a year and a half. And it is clear to me, and so I assume to all, that NONE of them got a SINGLE thing or made ONE SINGLE prediction that had any reality component at all or even came close to what happened.
So why then are they trusted to characterize this good man? They are absolutely PROVEN fools of the most scurrilous sort, but a large number of people continue to blindly rely on them for their very belief system, swallowing whole a narrative professionally prepared for them.
As George Carlin said, if you take the average intelligence of the average American, you have to understand that half the people you meet today ain’t going to be that smart. That’s what average is.
Nonetheless, the mindless consumption of this intellectual D-CON is discouraging. About all they can do is crawl under the stove and die of a belly ache.
Ugh…I’m so dumb! It took until now but I finally get the point you’ve been making for so long. That being: if the MSM has been wrong at every turn during this entire election cycle why on Earth should anyone accept their predictions now about how Trump is going to destroy America??
Precisely. The fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.
If you have three consecutive wives, all of whom love you, four gorgeous children, all of whom adore you, and 20,000 employees, none of which will say a bad word about you, how evil can you be? How racist, how mysogynist, how desperately deprave?
If you have a 40 year record of success AND educational failures, and wind up on top a few billion dollars in the most competitive real estate market in the world, what kind of retard can you be? Stupid? Unqualified? Incompetent?
And if you spend 18 months distorting, slanting, biasing, and lying, characterizing things we have all heard at the source as something else, and absolutely failing in EVERY SINGLE PREDICTION YOU MAKE, why would we find you relevant now? Come to Jesus moment? The dawn of sentience? New hair dresser?
I would urge you to apply this to political ideologies as well.
1. If you enact something on a small scale, and it works getting a good result, expand it.
2. If you enact something on a small scale, and discover it has “unintended consequences” do NOT advocate doing more of it. It is unlikely that doing more of it with more enthusiasm is going to fix it.
As Deng Xio Peng said in establishing the capitalism experiment in Shenzhen China “At some point we have to acknowledge that it is not a failure of process, but of policy.” Meaning that doing communism better and with more efficiency was not going to produce a better result. It was communism itself that was the failure. Communism – poor outcome. Capitalism – good outcome. Whatever particular characteristics in favor or against either policy, the ultimate outcome is all that matters. And so today China exhibits actually a FREER and more robust example of capitalism than the United States and Europe.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/my-unhappy-life-as-a-climate-heretic-1480723518
BTW. Donald Trump met with Al Gore for quite awhile this morning…
After two years or so of reading your occasional essays, I had previously been concerned that your politics were too far to the right for my taste, but this essay has convinced me that you are indeed as honest as you claim. BTW, I support everything you say here, even though I routinely identify as a Canadian left-winger. Indeed, truth is the basis of all human progress; my personal experience over my 68-year lifetime to date is full of examples proving that honesty is the best policy. Keep up the good work, Jack. You have many folks on your side.
My “politics” probably are too right for you. Picture far far right of Republican conservative T-party, kind of dead in between raving Libertarians and Anarchists.
But I don’t hold them too dear. And I would urge you all to consider something serious. You are all too accepting of the labels and identities provided to you by the media.
I am an old fat white guy from rural America who believes in God and the Highway Patrol. But that is a characacture. I happen to be married to a black woman, am a multimillionair, have an IQ in the 160 range, and spend my days and nights on alternate energy and computer algorithms. And I guess I have recently learned, rascist and deplorable, with four mixed race children and a first wife from the Philippine Islands?
This sounds like I am claiming to be exceptional. I’m not only not claiming it, I’m not exceptional. Everyone I KNOW personally, is an unusual mix of views on any particular topic, some VERY liberal and some VERY conservative and some VERY middle of the road and some very ordinary and some very surprising and their personal lives are similarly VERY much a unique mixture of things.
Only among the seriously stupid/retard class do you find “pure” leftist liberal socialist psychopaths, or right wing conservative white supremecist, racist mysogynists. And they are thankfully very few.
But our common campfire, the TV has a vested interest in having TWO teams because it is a little bit like NFL football and they can keep score. As I’ve noted, they do not appear to be among our best and brightest.
More darkly, there is a political class that is empowered by a 51/49 split. As long as they have that, about half the population will be displeased with their actions, and about half will be very supportive of it. Meaning they can do anything they like in total freedom and sell it to the highest bidder.
If we actually gave up the identity politics and examined each ISSUE dispassionately, a 70 or 75% concensus pretty much relegates them to doing what we tell em to do. In essentially 100% of the issues.
So I would posit that you are being manipulated into choosing your group, identifying with it strongly, and adjusting your thinking to rationalize whatever the party line is. In this way, we can achieve 51/49 and both the media and the pampered political class, both of which live somewhat better than we do, are free to do as they like.
Liberal/conservative is an illusion. Neither applies to any real intelligent humanoids I have personal knowledge of. In reality, you are going to agree with some things I say and disagree with others. And I you. And it’s all good.
But I deeply resent the cynical manipulation by both politicians and media elites.
Awesome.
Jack, although I am not living in the USA, you made me change my mind in favour of Trump. Maybe a little bit cynical but I guess Trump will be much better for the World than Clinton would have been.
It looks like he does not understand the concept of lie nor will he take the time to learn it. Changing your mind because you have learned something you did not know before that is not a lie but wisdom. Knowing in advance you are promising something that you have no idea to even try, that is a lie and that is what most of our european polititians do and that is why they do not know how to deal with Trump.
I like Anne Coulter’s characterization:
The media/alt-left take Trump literally but not seriously.
Trump followers take Trump seriously, but not literally.
I think Trump himself falls into the latter group, as do I.
This is the part that worries me, Jack. Speaking in parables and leaving the meaning for later means the voters pretty much had to hand him a blank check. I don’t like those kind of deals. Even more worrisome is that it seemed to me that although he may not be bigoted himself, he was happy to surf the bigotry of others, and deliberately. I do agree the media often cannot tell a mountain from a molehill, as evidenced by their freak-out when he took a call from the President of Taiwan. I do rather like that he tweaked Chinese noses; time to re-assess who holds which cards and what really matters in our deals. I do agree that he does seem masterful in that arena. Some of the other stuff he’s said… well I hope our democracy is robust enough to guide him.
I disagree on the bigotry – I HEARD about it from the media, but I never heard it from Trump. He can hardly be faulted by who supported him. And the only thing he said that COULD qualify was a ban on Muslim immigrants, which at this point I support wholeheartedly.
As to the rest, he met with Al Gore for two hours today. I’ve told you guys all along he is NOT an ideologue. He doesn’t really believe in anything but winning. Or rather, like myself, he’s deeply suspicious of his own bullshit, much less everybody elses.
Jack Rickard
Re the “350 kw (CCS) charge network” Here is the BMW version of the Press release
https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/global/article/detail/T0266311EN/bmw-group-daimler-ag-ford-motor-company-and-volkswagen-group-with-audi-porsche-plan-a-joint-venture
I initially pricked up my ears on this but on reflection my opinion is that this is smoke and mirrors with nothing new or surprising
* According to Wikipedia, VW are committed to spend “$2 billion in the U.S. over the next 10 years on CCS and other charging infrastructure” as part of the settlement of the diesel gaming fiasco
* Volkswagen, General Motors, BMW, Daimler, Ford and Hyundai have been committed to CCS since 2011
* The current CCS standard is I believe about 50 – 100 kW depending on voltage. CCS have already announced an intention to increase this to 350kW over the next few years.
In other words this is probably just part of the charger wars. It is 8 years behind Tesla and to my mind just reinforces the half-hearted uptake of EVs by the Western manufacturers. Nissan (the EV mass market leader) seem to be committed to Chademo although that could change.
MEANWHILE CHINA already has electric bus fast charging stations reportedly operating over 350kW: https://electrek.co/2015/12/07/china-opens-a-new-fast-charging-station-with-25-chargers-at-360-kw/
Personally I’d like to see CCS go the way of Betamax because of it’s parentage (foot-dragging traditional automakers in Detroit and Germany). Plus the plug is an aesthetic monstrosity
The NEMA 14-50 plug and receptacle is rated at 12kW maximum. Did I hear you right that you are going to connect it to a 240 volt/100 amp breaker? Running 20 kW or more through it may result in a release of heat and smoke but it might work. Or, did I missunderstand something?
At 50 minutes: YES, you can use your grid tie system even if the grid goes down! It’s called AC coupling. Add a DC inverter like the Magnum PAE series, a sub-panel and a battery. When the grid goes down, the PV array couples to the battery inverter that is sending AC power to the grid inverter. See: http://bit.ly/2gRwIBz
Thanks for another video fix. I was feeling some EVTV withdrawal.
Larry Crutcher
Starlight Solar Power Systems
When ever one is required to take a wiring class the saying is that: Breakers (or fuses) are only there to protect the wires (lines). When I use a 60 amp breaker with the plug Jack used I use #6 AWG. The code book seems to indicate a #3 AWG in copper would be sufficient for a continuous 100 amp load which charging most certainly qualifies as. I’ve pushed 200 amps through these connectors for just a few seconds. In charging I’d want to put an infra red temp gun on the plug just as a safety check. The old-timers saying about motors was that if you can’t hold your hand on it for 10 seconds it’s over heating. I’ve checked on ship harbor power plugs and they are pricey. A breaker is usually not designed to protect the load nor is it a safety device for electrocution events. That called a GFCI. Motors are protected by the overloads in the motor starter.
Actually we did have a Magnum 48v that I think we got from you Larry. Here’s the issue, like ALL the readily available inverters, the Magnum runs on 48v. You can also get 24v models and I think they even have a 12v.
We drive electric cars. They range from 120v on the low end to increasingly 300-400 v on the high end. We have a LOT of them. I could run this place for 3 weeks just on the batteries in the cars sitting around the shop. But we can’t hook up any of them.
Similarly solar charge controllers. They are ALL designed for 24/36/48vdc battery systems. I don’t actually HAVE a 48v battery around here, though of course we could cobble something together pretty quickly.
Finally, it is often the case that I need to drain a car down to near zero SOC to do maintenance or balancing on it. Right now that means going out and mindlessly driving around for 3 hours. Why not use that power to run my refrigerators and air conditioner and lights?
So the import of what we are doing is to locate and in most cases have designed and built for us, charge controllers and inverters and CHAdeMO chargers that are compatible with the EV batteries we have on hand as a power source.
Yes, you will need a 48 volt battery to activate the Magnum inverter. Once it is on, your array is now usable. You have 240 volt 2P power up to the limit of the inverter. Stack a pair of inverters and you’ll have 8.8kW. That can run lights, computer and other items or power your new 240 volt up-converter to charge the car battery. The point is, if the grid goes down, not all is lost as it is now.
The cost may be high if the grid rarely goes down. On the other hand, having that power available in case of the “big one” is somewhat comforting.
Now, I’m a think outside the box kind of guy. To use your EV battery to run shop loads, why not use a grid tie inverter? The input voltage is 200 and 600 volts DC and they produce 240 Vac out. Again, with the Magnum feeding the grid inverter to activate it, you will have the ability to use or discharge your EV battery.
Larry
Just thought of one more way to use a grid inveter to discharge an EV batttery: Connect the EV battery to the grid inverter and that to your grid after the PV performance meter. You will dump car battery current up to the output rating of the inverter and get credit for it on your bi-directional utility meter.
Found it interesting that Clinton had roughly 2/3 support along the US/Mexican border states.
Guess I should have specified the counties along the US/Mexican border states voted at least 2/3 Clinton. So much for overwhelming support for the wall.
… In other news, the biggest of those FL utilities got a unanimous approval this week from the FL Public Service Commission to raise its rate base by approx 10% by 2020. Oh, but part of the deal is to build 300MW of solar per year for next three years. The fine print says ratepayers will pay for it. Suprise! Also this week, non other than Solar City, aka Telsa, announced that they are moving into the FL market. This is interesting because their PPA model is illegal in the state, the same law(s) that Floridians for Solar Choice were trying to overturn in an attempt to constitutionalize third party sales to contiguous properties. This leaves the option of either an outright cash sale, or a finance lease/ model. I’m curious as to what the Honest cost of the “solar roof” will be. I need a new roof pronto. I may resort to re-shingling mine and install a traditional solar array by 2020, that is If Trump doesn’t abolish the solar ITC by then.
Another example for you, here in Arizona we were voting to place 3 board members of the corporation commission, the people regulating our
electric companies, this is a 5 member board. An ad run for the three Republicans said all the right buzz words, pro solar, for the little guy tax payer, against out of state interest. But at the end if the people read the fine print it said the two biggest backers paying for the ad were Pinnacle West and Pinnacle West Corp, the out of state interest that owns APS electric company. The three Republicans did win. What does that say about us here??
Steven
Just watched your December 2nd video: One thing I like to tell people. “You can not beat the convenience of having your ‘fuel’ delivered straight to your ‘tank’ in your garage while you are sleeping. I’d like to see Chevron beat that!”
I’ve been driving electric for 4 years now. I do not miss standing out in freezing cold, smelling god knows what toxic fumes, waiting for the tank to fill. And the kicker is I’m paying for this privilege. And for a young woman in this situation, worrying what that carload of men pulling up on the other side of the pump are planning to do.
We’re not quite all electric yet. Every night the Volt and the Leaf are on charge. My wife burns about 10 gallons a month when range demands it. The cars are sophisticated enough to warm their own cabins in the morning while still hooked up to the EVSEs. My Buick use to drink $40 worth of fuel a week.
Jack,
Great Show, Great Thoughts, very concise!
You say the things I’m too lazy to express or write down…
Thank you for your service to us!
Hello Jack,
Well done on your upholding of Assange and Snowden. I did not think you had it in you, frankly. Until we morph into a society that values the truth, civilization will always be at risk.
What Assange, Snowden and Chelsea Manning did were basically acts of journalism. Stuff that the mainstream media should do but would never dare. CNN, MSNBC and all the others will not even properly debate this stuff, let alone make revelations. They have become invalid entertainment mediocrity outlets and I wish people would vote with their feet and switch them off. But the level of critical thinking is piss poor.
Regarding Trump, I would not be too quick to predict how his term of office will go – it might be down to how the cookie crumbles. He is definitely a complete liar – how the Republican party did not see this is mind-boggling.. Hopefully, his lies might be rendered inconsequential over the next 4 years. Lets see.
Hello to all, Just being here is a leap for me, In my humble opine that some of you are a bit off the mark, but time will tell. Thanks to Jack for his go’ins on and I do enjoy them. As far as me I’m sit’in in the corner siting to retire. I wanted to check this stuff out to see it all works. And I must say I am enjoying it all. And I do mean all.
Who wouldn’t pay money to be a fly on the wall for this meeting.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/12/14/apple-ceo-tim-cook-meeting-with-donald-trump-elon-musk-privately-after-nyc-tech-summit
Jack,
As the only happily retired Military Intelligence person (that I know of) in this group, I had to offer a few opinions.
Julian Assange is wanted for violating bail, suspicion of sexual assault and rape. He has not been charged with anything else despite what the media may say. Are the charges trumped up? That is for a court to decide, not the court of public opinion. I say let the trial take place in Sweden, and let that system of jurisprudence decide. Assange has never signed any non-disclosure agreement with any intelligence agency, so publishing documents in his possession is probably legal even under the Espionage Act of 1917.
Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning did violate that same act and also possibly treason regardless of his motives and intentions. Manning was a U.S. Army Soldier and as such committed his acts in a theater of ongoing operations in a time of war. According to the letter of the laws, he was eligible for the death penalty and in my opinion should have been sentenced to it.
Edward Snowden falls in between these two extremes. Did he violate the Espionage Act? Yes, regardless of his motives. However, Snowden was a civilian at the time of his acts and thus falls under different rules than those in the military.
Don’t get me wrong, I am completely in favor of an open press and an open, civil and informed populace. But actions have consequences, and becoming a fugitive from justice only helps to discredit the very cause you champion.
Brian
Actually actions DO have consequences. And when you uses our nation’s confidentiality laws to protect information you, as an employee of the public do not want known because of the consequences of an angry public, YOU should be hung for treason.
Individuals working within the government who observe wrongdoing, protected by secrecy, have a moral obligation to bring that information forward. Sunshine IS the best disinfection for the rot of corruption that inevitably invades the body of the government and yes of the military as well.
Right now we are 24/7 on the television about Russia “manipulating” the election by revealing electronic mail messages from Hillery Clinton and officers and employees of the Demoncratic National Committee. I sit here dumbfounded. There is apparently ZERO evidence, and a lot of very knowledgeable sounding “conjecture” about Russia’s involvement. As someone quite familiar with this area, the idea that this can be detected by our “intelligence community” is patently absurd and anyone with ANY knowledge in this area knows full well that it is almost always an inside job or incredibly lax security allowing any 14 years old to penetrate.
But NO discussion of the wrongdoing that WAS uncovered by the leaks. No mention of GROSS violations of election law. Our media is WORSE than the Russians or anybody else for that matter. Somehow, the election might have been different if these evil actors were NOT revealed by the truth exhibited in their own words and their own written e-mails.
I was entrusted with highly classified information for over twelve years quite beyond anything you will ever see in the military. And I abided by the laws and regulations because that was part of the job and I had agreed to do it. You cash the check, you wear the shirt. BUt by the end, I was convinced that we spent an awful lot of effort to keep some very dubious things secret that could have vastly accelerated civilian technological applications and that appeared very dubious in any lasting edge over our enemies.
Assange, Snowden, and Manning have “outed” information of gross MISBEHAVIOR by governments, including the Russian government.
The sexual assault and rape cases against Assange have been disavowed by the women involved, and the prosecutor in Sweden. Only later did a DIFFERENT prosecutor resurrect the charges in an attempt to comply with U.S. wishes to extradict Assange on ESPIONAGE CHARGES. At no time did he “hack” anything. He published things. And the Obama Adminstration and the FBI in Washington DC have spent a fortune attempting to “bring him to justice” because they do not want this information released to the public. Again, it would be simpler to just NOT BEHAVE ILLEGALLY IN THE FIRST PLACE. Then you don’t need ot spend much time on who knows what.
Basically at its heart, secrecy is usually a greater evil than anything that would befall us from anything becoming public. And if you are doing something you don’t want the public to know about, like your mother, there is a clue in there somewhere. And Assange, Snowden, et al are SPECIFICALLY why we have such a strong constiutional provision regarding a free and open press.
We currently suffer under the inidignities of having a free and unfettered PROPOGANDA machine while genuine free and open press is PROSECUTED.
Those who reveal wrongdoing in government and bring corruption and dishonesty out into the light are HEROS. And those who faithfully keep secret our nation’s secrets, allowing corruption and dishonesty a fertile area to grow, are the traitors.
You seem confused about this. I am not.
Jack Rickard
Your postings are quite informative, however I view political happenings through different color tinted lens. That is not surprising as I was born in a different place and time. I am 63 old with a British engineering degree, and 30 years of work for one of the foremost energy company in the world, at senior management level in engineering and security functions. I have also kept a wary eye on the goings-on between East and West (all the war comic books I read as a kid were about the second world war). When two elephants fight, the grass suffers.
If there is an alt-left, surely there is an alt-right. On the political spectrum. And we can all pigeon hole ourselves somewhere at the edges, or somewhere in between of this two (extreme?) positions. Our friends are also at liberty to think or say this is where we actually fit in the spctrum. More interestingly, or positions on this line(s) can be purely economic or cultural, or a mix of the two. Our positions can shift with time, our fortunes or misfortunes.
The central theme of you post is the need for Honesty in all things. Surely Honesty denotes Trust, Faithfulness, Sincerity and Reliability. I think a lack of any of any of these traits, makes a mockery of the others. I will therefore use this to judge any security officer who spills the beans for whatever expediency or motivation. You do not like the cookhouse, your conscience keeps you awake at night, you are free to leave, but do not spill the beans. That goes without saying, and any type of colorations. STOP.
If, all the security officers, and those in position of trust in government that have abused their offices in the recent past, did so to meet a political agenda, I say, they deserve their just oats. That call is independent of ones position on the political spectrum.
On climate change, nature abhors extremes. As sure as there is tomorrow, all the ice caps will melt. All forms of extremes will collapse into the middle – into a nice warm puddle. Question is, how long it takes to get there, and how scorching or freezing the extremes are, along the way. Whilst nature, and all the external bodies play their part to turn us into a brown planet (as opposed to a red planet), what is our own role?
It’s been a nice interlude. Almost 60 years of relative peace. Can we make it last just a little bit longer?
BigSam. The world has not been as verdant since far before 5 million years ago. All because we released the sequestered carbon that belongs with the oxygen in the atmosphere to let the plants breathe. That trace gas becomes every single carbon atom in your body.
RSS satellite records over the years have clearly proven the MODTRAN calculations are incorrect. Along with all the IPCC predictions.
Something I have said for years.
Any higher concentration of any gas does not necessarily broaden its resonant frequencies. Besides, the extra CO2 at ground level does increase the air temperature ever so slightly but above the tropopause the temperatures are plummeting over time.
Oh yea, the same also makes the Antarctic ever colder.
I am as knowledgeable about global warming as others on this post. In fact, part of my career was mainly tied to trying to keep the signal above the grass, which is, keeping the signal to noise ration figure as high up as technically possible, as preached by Shannon. Of course we can always sieve through all that spectral grass, and get some intelligible result, if you have the correct mixing formula.
Rather, my side remark is about a construct of some maths functions that involves time, and even practical radiation or conduction experiments, that says – at infinity, in the long term, in the quiescent state etc. – we will get this result, or, reach this state, or that state. So, can we ignore all the trumping noise or the initial overshot in the functions? I think it depends on the dynamic range of the measuring system, or observer.
If we cannot agree that the sun will eventually die, that the earth’s delicate atmosphere will be torn off, that the goings on below the earth’s mantle are mainly inferred, or at best, based on boundary conditions, we can maybe agree that the world oceans now contain a large soup of plastic trash, and that a lot of our habitat have heavy pollution or smog.
Let us therefore agree or assume, that everything eventually comes to rest at quiescent, or in the steady state. Because, after all, the Alfa and Omega planned it so. A merry New Year to y’all.
My post should read –
“I am NOT as good or knowledgeable about global warming as others on this post. In fact, part of my career was mainly tied to trying to keep the signal above the grass, which is, keeping the signal to noise ration figure as high up as technically possible, as preached by Shannon. Of course we can always sieve through all that spectral grass, and get some intelligible result, if you have the correct mixing formula”.
Must have dropped off “NOT” in the posting, else 2nd paragraph will not make sense.
You seem to equate comments and promises made in the present as truths. Neither Hillary or Donald comments or promises can be proven as true. Only history will prove it. As it is, Donald is off to a bad start. “we will build a wall” before election… “some may be a fence” after election.
I do however agree that Asange/Snowden are the true patriots – being truthful to the citizens, unlike the government we elected.